Famous Five Fluffs

[Domino]

Thats right. It's a smart watch with a built-in laser beam.

[Courtenay]

This updating and modernising really IS going too far now...

[Liam]

Pete, I don’t have that reference in my book, because I used the 2000-2001 editions sold by Navrang, and there the penknife was changed to a (wrist) watch!

Julian says they'd need a special watch to cut through a leather bag

Anita, I may have confused pen-knife with pocket knife, but I was referring back to this quote from Pete:

…George wins the new penknife from him (not Julian) in Finniston Farm published 1960.

I’ll have to look at it again tomorrow with a clearer head!

[Anita Bensoussane]

You accidentally referenced Secret Trail instead of Finniston Farm:

We do get just one reference to pen-knife in the Famous Five books in their fifteenth adventure,Secret Trail:

Pete, I don’t have that reference in my book, because I used the 2000-2001 editions sold by Navrang, and there the penknife was changed to a (wrist) watch!

[pete9012S]

Many thanks for providing the updated texts Liam,which confirm the original mistake by Enid about the pocket-knife bet.

Your book is a great help in researching these sorts of queries.

Regards

Pete

ps
I got the info about the use of pen-knife from your book too Liam.

Pen-knife 15Sec17: 4/ pg186-187.

Martin, Liam. Dissecting the Magic of Enid Blyton's Famous Five Books (p. 129). Searidge. Kindle Edition.

[Liam]

No problem Pete.

You accidentally referenced Secret Trail instead of Finniston Farm:

I see now. I mixed up two separate posts from Pete. One was about a mistake in Finniston Farm. The other was about the uniqueness of the word pen-knife in Secret Trail. I quoted the second, but talked about the first - I had not known it was originally a pocket-knife that George had won from Dick.

I should probably stay away from the site late at night.

[IceMaiden]

Also, the mistake you spotted was revised in the 2000-2001 editions:

‘I say - do you think it’s all right to let George take up Junior’s breakfasts said Julian, after a pause. ‘George, don’t throw the tray at him or anything, will you?’
‘I might,’ said George, eating a boiled egg. ‘Anything to get your new pocket-knife from you!’
‘Well, don’t go too far in teasing Junior,’ said Julian warningly. ‘You don’t want to make the Henning family walk out and leave Mrs Philpot high and dry!’

'I say -- do you think it's all right to let George take up Junior's breakfast?' said Dick, after a pause. 'George, don't throw the tray at him or anything, will you?'
'I might,' said George, eating a boiled egg. 'Anything to get your new watch from you!'
'Well, don't go too far teasing Junior,' said Julian warningly. 'You don't want to make the Henning family walk out and leave Mrs. Philpot high and dry!'

Logically, we should be able to “ 'see' who George is talking to”. In my editions that is Dick - he speaks last before George. However I don’t know if it is a revision:

In both my first and second editions it is Julian so I'd think it was thought to be a mistake and altered. I can't say I see it as a mistake though, when I look at it I read it as a three way conversation, George talking to both Julian and Dick at once.

[Moonraker]

I would think with the amount of knife-crime in the UK now, it is only sensible to change the wording here.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Having thought about it, I'd plump for the original wording. After all, young readers will encounter children with knives in plenty of other books (Swallows and Amazons springs to mind immediately, in which seven-year-old Roger is given a penknife by his mother) and it may well do them good to read of knives being used sensibly.

I've just read a modern children's book (The Good Thieves by Katherine Rundell, published in 2019) in which the main character, Vita, is presented with a knife by her grandfather. He says, "It was mine when I was your age. It's called a Swiss Army knife. To remind you, you are an army unto yourself. Use it as a tool, not a weapon. Your weapon in life is not going to be a knife - it will be something far more powerful and original. But the tweezers will come in handy. Good tweezers are not to be underestimated." Vita is already good at throwing and, after seeing a knife-juggler at a circus, she learns to throw knives accurately.

With other children's books having more extensive passages about knives, I'd leave the incidental mentions in the Famous Five series alone.

[MJE]

     I promised earlier to post an explanation about plot holes I'd found in two Famous Five books, if requested - and I have been requested.
     However, I have very limited time now, so I will just outline in the briefest form what the issues are, which may be sufficient to prompt anyone familiar with the books to realize what the problems are. I will leave a fuller explanation, plus my ideas for fixing them, for another day or so (I will be out for much of the coming day, after getting some hours' sleep, at least).

Five on a Treasure Island:
     The problem is that Timmy is down in the dungeons at one point, with the main entrance blocked by heavy stones on top, thus leaving the rope in the well as the only way in and out. A little later Timmy is above, outside, with no mention of how he got there.
     The fix would be that a way of lifting Timmy up the well would have to be devised, which could probably be slotted into the plot, but would require several paragraphs' text to describe it (the aim would be to disrupt the rest of the story as little as possible). No baskets are handy - I suppose Timmy could be wrapped up in a blanket or tarpaulin of some sort, and if that had grommets in it, that would make it easy to thread a cord through, making the blanket into a kind of bag, and to lift that up somehow. Of course it would take time to organize all this, and I don't recall if the plot allows sufficient time at the right point. I'm sure Timmy would anything but enjoy that little ordeal.
     I'll need to think about that further - it would be a very delicate operation indeed, owing to the need to ensure Timmy never fell down to the bottom of the well. You certainly can't say that "Five on a Treasure Island" lacks extremely dangerous settings.

Five Have a Mystery to Solve:
     After the Five and Wilfrid discover the treasure chamber, George is scrambling down the tunnel again for some reason - to get help, I suppose. But we later learn that, at the same time, one of the men was walking in the opposite direction up the tunnel, and yet they never met each other. If they had met, I'm sure they would not have just said good-day and continued on their way: the man would certainly have captured George and probably taken h -r back to the chamber where the others were locked in.
     The fix would rely on the fact that, near the treasure chamber, the tunnel does not remain just a tunnel - it goes past a row of dungeon cells, I seem to recall, and past one or two other obstacles. The fix would propose that there was an alternative passage around the other side of one of the obstacles, and, perhaps hearing someone coming toward her, George slips into the alternative passage, lets the man go past via the main way, then George emerges from the alternative passage at the lower end, and continues on her way. This fix might require the addition of only one or two paragraphs of text.

     I will re-read the relevant passages in both books again before commenting on this further, as I do not remember all the details fully just now.

Regards, Michael.

[Bertie]

Interesting points, MJE.

Even reading the book as a child, I always wondered about that point of how Julian and George got Timmy up the well, when they were in a rush and needed two hands on the rope where the ladder was broken? In fact, I posted about that very plot mystery last year in another thread about Five on a Treasure Island (my post is about two-thirds down page one)...

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8998

[Anita Bensoussane]

Thanks, Michael. A number of people have mentioned the Timmy problem over the years (Five on a Treasure Island), but I don't think I've heard/seen anyone mention the tunnel problem (Five Have a Mystery to Solve). I'll have to take a look at the relevant part of the book to refresh my memory.

[Fiona1986]

There's a similar issue in Five Run Away Together (apologies if this has been mentioned earlier in the thread).

The Five find the cave from the seaward side, then discover the hole in the top which they can get in and out of using the rope. Timmy can jump down through the hole into the cave, but there's never any mention of how he gets back out again - there's no waiting around for him to take a longer route over the rockpools or anything.

There are probably other examples of Timmy appearing where he shouldn't but I can't think of them right now. I think Blyton relied on the readers being so caught up in the drama that they didn't stop to wonder.

[Anita Bensoussane]

It seems that Enid Blyton was so caught up in the drama that she didn't stop to wonder either!

[Fiona1986]

I feel like I'm testing out my opinions on her writing when I read to Brodie. So far he has not questioned the appearance of Timmy at the top of the well etc, but he did notice the castle room having fallen in and then being whole again. He kept going on about it, in fact, and wanted me to make up my own wording during FOKIA so that the roof would be fallen in again.