Have you ever wondered how much crazy trouble six unsupervised children could get into? There seems to be no end to the scrapes the six Bastable children can get into!
There are three books in this series, The Story of the Treasure Seekers, The Wouldbegoods, and New Treasure Seekers. Each book is about the length of Tom Sawyer or Anne of Green Gables—the last book is probably a little shorter than the other two.
The books are fairly easy to read and occasional hard words are usually explained within the text. Any child who can read would probably enjoy the books, but a little bit of maturity is called for in order to recognize the do-not-try-this-at-home incidents. In general though, the age range is about 7+.
Skip straight to my brief conclusion about the series at the bottom, or read straight on through for all the details!
The Plot [spoiler alert!]
The Story of the Treasure Seekers is about six motherless children—Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Alice, Noel, and H.O. (whose real name I’ve forgotten) Bastable. Around the time their mother died—which was not long before the story began—their father’s business crashed as well, so they were left poor and also relatively unsupervised.
The children are determined to help their father and “restore the fortunes of the house of Bastable.” They try digging in the backyard, selling poetry, finding a princess, being bandits, and a host of other things—each making for an enjoyable story, usually wrapping itself up within a single chapter. In the long run, they have an opportunity for being kind to an uncle of their mother’s, and, impressed, he helps their father’s struggling business.
In the next book, The Wouldbegoods, Dora, Alice, and a friend named Daisy take it upon themselves to try to encourage good behavior by forming the Wouldbegood Society. This policing is rather resented by Oswald and Dicky, but they give being good a shot anyway. As a general rule it tends to backfire and leads them into quite a few scrapes. But the biggest disaster of all (from Oswald’s point of view) is finding Albert-next-door’s Uncle’s long-lost fiancée—because then Albert’s Uncle marries, and marrying (in Oswald’s opinion) is little better than a necessary evil.
New Treasure Seekers does not have an overall plot; it’s a series of short stories featuring the children. I actually found it even more humorous than the previous books.
All three books are narrated by Oswald (he pretends like it’s supposed to be a secret, but any observant reader would very quickly figure out which of the six children is writing).
The first book does a good job of having a complete story arc. The second one rambles a little between Albert’s Uncle’s romance and the Wouldbegood Society. The third book embraces the single-chapter story format, in my opinion to good effect.
7/10 for the plot of the first book, 4/10 for the second, and 6/10 for the third.
The Point
The biggest thing I walked away with from The Story of the Treasure Seekers, as far as moral is concerned, was the need for being kind wherever you get the chance; you never know if your poor American Indian relative might turn out to be actually a rich Englishman from India.
The Wouldbegoods, despite its title, has less of a moral. In fact, the moral kind of is that you shouldn’t try too hard to be good—it backfires. This is kind of tongue-in-cheek… but it takes a judgement call on the part of the reader to decide to treat it that way.
The stories in New Treasure Seekers are mostly unconnected but the book does have as a recurring moral the “honor” of the house—a noble sentiment which causes the children to stick together and refuse to do anything they perceive as disgraceful.
Oswald has humorous ways of putting his morals—such as, “Quarrels should always be made up before bed time. It says so in the Bible. If this simple rule was followed there would not be so many wars and martyrs and law suits and inquisitions and bloody deaths at the stake.” Mostly he does a good job pointing morals.
The Bastable children tend to do things that they kind of know are questionable without asking first. It would be a harsh judgement to say that the books encourage disobedience or even that they encourage mischievousness, but they do present being “bad”, i.e. doing silly things any responsible adult would prohibit, as being kind of fun and more interesting than being sensible. Some children will easily understand that this is Oswald’s opinion and at bottom even Oswald knows it’s not really true. Others might run with it. I would stop a bit to consider the character of a child before I gave them any of these books to read.
7/10 for the moral of the first book, 3/10 for the second, 4/10 for the third.
The Style
Since the books are narrated in first person by Oswald, a twelve year old boy, they’re very casual and usually successfully boyish in tone. They’re also easy to read, although once in a while I was a little confused as to exactly what was happening. Oswald’s “persona” makes for pretty fun reading, but he is sometimes annoyingly cocky, especially toward the beginning.
It seems strange that a boy like Oswald would be writing the story of his life, but if a boy like that did write his story, this sounds about like how it would turn out!
6/10 for style.
Conclusion
6/10 for The Story of the Treasure Seekers, 4/10 for The Wouldbegoods, and 5/10 for New Treasure Seekers.
To sum up, as frequently happens in a series, the first book (The Story of the Treasure Seekers) has the most well integrated plot and moral. The second book is more of a series of comparatively unrelated adventures, and the third book is unapologetically a bunch of short adventures, sometimes with brief morals of their own. All three books consistently maintain the same casual first person writing style. If it’s true that laughing extends your lifespan, you’ll probably live at least a couple weeks longer by reading these!
The adventures of the six children protagonists are fun, wild, and exciting. A sensible child shouldn’t have trouble recognizing that the Bastables’ escapades are not the sort of thing you should try at home, but I can’t recommend the book for a kid who likes to run away with any wild idea he can find.
All three books in this series are available for free as ebooks from Project Gutenberg.
The Story of the Treasure Seekers: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/770
The Wouldbegoods: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32466
New Treasure Seekers: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25496
Have any questions about this book? Share your thoughts in the comment section below!
You might also be interested in reading my reviews of these other books:
Geneva D 
What do you think?