Good Company!

[Moonraker]

Good to see the Find-outers get a mention.

[Daisy]

Yes, isn't it! I think as a child I was more keen to follow the Find-Outers than the Famous Five although I did enjoy them too!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Yes, that is good to see! The Find-Outers books influenced many of our games and activities when we were children.

[Eddie Muir]

It's great to see the Find-Outers books mentioned. They have always been my favourites of all Enid Blyton's wonderful books.

[Rob Houghton]

I definitely read more Find Outer books as a child - and avoided the Famous Five like the plague except for two Famous Five annuals given to me as birthday presents! The Find Outers are much underrated and deserve to be better known, but as it says in the article, the Famous Five are more 'flash' !

[Julie2owlsdene]

Great news. The Find-Outers did more detecting than the Five.

[John Pickup]

Isn't it strange that the Famous Five books are probably Enid's best known series but most of the regular posters on here tend to dismiss them in favour of the other series? So do I.

[Rob Houghton]

It's strange with the Famous Five - I like them much more now than I did as a kid. There aren't any series I really dislike now, but I was much more picky when I was younger!

[Machupicchu14]

I always think, that in the way they are written The Five Find Outers have something really special and gripping about them. After reading them again, I have come to discovered that they are in fact my favourite series along with Malory Towers !!
Of course, the Famous Five still are excellent, as they were the first to introduce me to Enid Blyton.
Glad to see FFO mentioned.

[Courtenay]

Hooray, I'm not the only Blyton fan in the world who thinks the Famous Five are over-rated and prefers the Find-Outers!! (I always enjoyed the Five as well, as did most of us, but they somehow seem to overshadow so many other books/series by Enid that are at least equally deserving.)

[Dinah Cunningham]

Well for me I have to admit, that I like the Famous Five more then the Find Outers. Though I like the Adventure-Series even better. I think some may also come when and how you read the first of the Series.

[Katharine]

I have always loved the Famous Five, and have never really seen the appeal of the Find Outers. That may have something to do with the fact that my parents had some of the FF books from their own childhoods, so I read those first and started my own collection. I only owned one FFO book, which I was indifferent to, probably because it was towards the end of my interest in Enid Blyton (for a few years). I do wish I'd read the series as a child, because obviously many of you rate the books very highly, but they just don't do anything much for me, and I'm sure I'd feel differently if I'd read them as a child.

[Courtenay]

Hmmm, not necessarily. I read both the Famous Five and Five Find-Outers as a child — about the same number of each during the same time period — and enjoyed them both, but it was the characters and tone of the Find-Outers that I tended to prefer and still do. It's really just a case of individual tastes; they're two quite different series and appeal to people in different ways. I always have liked the Famous Five as well — it's just that they weren't my favourites. But they have probably always been Enid's most popular series overall, or at least her best-known.

Mind you, as I've said before, I can't go along with the idea that books you read as an adult will never have the same charm and appeal as ones you grew up with... I didn't read the Adventure series until I was an adult and it almost instantly pipped the Famous Five AND the Find-Outers as my favourite series by Enid Blyton that I've ever read!!

[Moonraker]

I always find the Five don't come across as real characters. Stuck-up Mr "Perfect" Julian, Obnoxious (yet loyal!) Georgina, Dick - probably the most real, wimpy Anne whose favourite toy is a frying-pan and the slightly ridiculous Timothy.

Whereas, I would simply love to have been invited into Fatty's shed. It is down to Fatty (and to a degree, Peter and Janet - I do have SS at the apex) that I have had a lifelong love of sheds. I was only in mine the other day, picturing boxes to sit on, home made lemonade on the shelf and a plate of biscuits on a tea-chest.

[Anita Bensoussane]

The perfect sort of shed!

I'm not sure that the Five are less "real" - it's just that when I was a child I didn't feel a particularly strong bond with any of them as individuals. The Adventure and Find-Outers series featured characters who made a massive impression on me and made me long to know them or be like them - namely Jack and Lucy-Ann Trent (and Philip Mannering to a degree), and Fatty and Bets. The Five appealed to me as a group but I didn't really identify with any of them.