The Famous Five
by Enid Blyton · first published 1981
7mentions
1recommended by
6HN commenters
2023–2025first – last mentioned
17% recommend83% neutral
mystery adventure and a lot to solve the five never tire out finding the solutions to their problems. Julian , Dick , Anne, George and their loyal dog Timmy are on their hols to watch out!
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Two book series that hit the nail for us are the series of Enid Blyton, like Famous Five, (we read to them at age 8-9) and Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid (they read by themselves). Especially the later is a masterpiece for (pre)puberty age. Days upon days of intellectual and emotional…
on “Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class” ↗This sort of thing has happened before within a similar genre of literature, but I suppose the body of work (The Famous Five by Enid Blyton) wasn’t popular enough to be amplified by the two opposing rage machines. It’s been kind of wild watching talking points get disseminated in real time on this one. A few days ago, most…
on “The rewriting of Roald Dahl is an act of cultural vandalism” ↗Raymond Briggs was being fully self aware using Golliwog, knowing that Enid Byton had used it in a thoroughly racist manner in The Famous Five childrens books: The story follows one day in the life of a working-class Bogeyman whose job it is to scare human beings, who are referred to as Drycleaners, and the narrative hinges on the joke…
on “Books banned by libraries after just one complaint about 'racist' content” ↗Speaking of Blyton; an excerpt from Five Go Mad in Dorset https://youtu.be/NhGlet1j8EA?t=73 highlights her use of golliwog .. although to be fair that's a Famous Five parody and her main use of the golliwog stereotype was in her Noddy book series (I got that part wrong in my comment above). It all sheds some light on the whys and wherefors of the Mau Mau rebellion.
on “Books banned by libraries after just one complaint about 'racist' content” ↗As a kid, I found translations of Enid Blyton's books, e.g. The famous five, in my mothers book case. They must have been huge in their time. For my generation (1980), these books are basically unknown. I found a bunch of lookalikes from other authors too. I thought these…
on “What Lasts and (Mostly) Doesn't Last” ↗…Though, if a child these days got up to half as much as William, the parents would be in jail for neglect and the child would be in care and up to his eyeballs in Ritalin. And that's before we get onto the Famous Five constantly trying to get themselves murdered by smugglers.
on “The Work of the Audiobook” ↗…when someone else's internal model for something differs to yours can help you better understand your own model as well as the new one you're learning. [1] You'll understand this if you ever read The Famous Five!
on “If English was written like Chinese (1999)” ↗