The Enid Blyton Society

I know there's a bit on Blyton Bloopers on the main site, but thought would have a thread on the famous five stories, as opposed to things like illustations and reprints etc.

I've a few in mine to kick off with, everyone else - join in

Alf / James, one that everyone knows, fisherboy Alf's name changs to James, same with Jo, Joan, Joanna the cook.

In Five on a Treasure Island...

Timmy is with George and Juilan trapped in the dungeon, they excape up the rope, but how does Timmy get out?

George goes to the little room to pick up an axe with which to smash the mens motorboat - how can she? The axe is in the dungeon from smashing down the door...

The room that the 5 camp in, but book 3 is in ruins, yet appears to be ok again in book 6.... Has George a team of stonemasons on Kirrin?

Just letting you know if you're interested that there's also quite an extensive Bloopers section in Keith's site: http://www.enidblyton.net/blyton-bloopers.html

OK, I have to start re-reading ALL the books now. I had NO idea! I knew that some of the new books have updated text, but I never figured out the bloopers. Thanks for the info!

Well I was just having a quick read through my copy of Five have a puzzling time and other stories and I spotted a couple of 'fluffs'

In Five have a puzzling time The cooks name changes within the story from Joan to Joanna - In adjacent sentences. We all know it changes in different books but I'd never seen it like this before

"Oh don't bother so, Joan!" said George. "You know where I always put them - in the outhouse, with the chicken-food."
"Well, you didn't this time, Miss," said Joanna, huffily.

Does anyone have the original magazine this story was in? I wonder if this is an original mistake or just a typo when the stories were reprinted in book form?


The other is in Happy Christmas, Five where it says that at the top of the christmas tree was the fairy doll that had been at the top of every christmas tree since George was little.
And yet in Five go adventuring again it says

Not even to buy tree-ornaments would the obstinate little girl go with Mr Rowland. She had never had a christmas tree before, and she was very much looking forward to it - but it was spoilt for her because Mr Rowland bought the things that made it so beautiful.

Oh Well!

"Five Go Off In A Caravan" is a misnomer, as they go off in two caravans. Also, the first of Eileen Soper's illustrations shows the vans approaching the Barnard/Kirrin's house complete with chimneys on the roof, in the next illustration they have gone, and the front windows are different!

Also, when the Five first get to Merran Lake, George says, "Where's the circus camp? I can't see it." She then sees a spire of smoke rising about a mile or so round the lake. "The camp must be in a hollow," she observes. Look at the illustration on the end papers - the camp is right at the edge of the lake, directly in front of the Five!

In Secret Trail Blyton has got a little bit confused with the laws of physics...

Light travels faster than sound so how come when in the cottage the girls hear the thunder and then the lightning flash occurs...

George@Kirrn wrote:
Timmy is with George and Juilan trapped in the dungeon, they excape up the rope, but how does Timmy get out?

Perhaps they tied a rope round Timmy and hauled him up?

Raci wrote:In Five have a puzzling time The cooks name changes within the story from Joan to Joanna - In adjacent sentences. We all know it changes in different books but I'd never seen it like this before

"Oh don't bother so, Joan!" said George. "You know where I always put them - in the outhouse, with the chicken-food."
"Well, you didn't this time, Miss," said Joanna, huffily.

Yes, but while Joanna may be her name, George may call her Joan as a nickname. However, I do take your point.

George@Kirrin wrote: In Five on a Treasure Island...
Timmy is with George and Juilan trapped in the dungeon, they excape up the rope, but how does Timmy get out?

Yes, well, some of us have always suspected that the too-intelligent Timmy was either (take your pick):

• 1) An Alien in disguise; or
  2) The end-result of a gm [genetically-modified] K9 experiment conducted by the War Department, but discontinued 'cos of budgetary cuts before a noticeable number of such dog geniuses were produced.

I mean, just look at all the times George gives Timmy complicated instructions that he understands perfectly, not to mention the high intelligence he shows in most of those independent actions he takes.....

In either case, escaping up a rope would be nothing for our hero. (You can dream up your own method.)

‘Aurélien Arkadiusz’

What always irritated me was in Five Fall Into Adventure, they are told not to leave the house, or else they won't see George of Timmy again. After this they decide not to risk leaving the house to get the police. Julian mustn't have been thinking clearly or he would have gone straight into Uncle Quentin's study, opened the Secret Way, run down to the Sanders' Farm, and either telephoned the police there, or run to the village and fetch them.

jchk4 wrote:What always irritated me was in Five Fall Into Adventure, they are told not to leave the house, or else they won't see George of Timmy again. After this they decide not to risk leaving the house to get the police. Julian mustn't have been thinking clearly or he would have gone straight into Uncle Quentin's study, opened the Secret Way, run down to the Sanders' Farm, and either telephoned the police there, or run to the village and fetch them.

Good point, jchk4. At times it almost seems as if EB began writing each book in the series on a largely blank slate. And this goes even further than her not utilizing certain discoveries from earlier books.

As a youngster, I found it a bit of a let-down - and others here have made this point before me - that as the 'Famous Five' series progressed, there was strangely little talk between Julian, Dick, George and Anne, comparing similar situations/scenarios from past adventures.....

Now, at my age, short-term memory-loss is only to be expected but I didn't think the children (the boys, anyway) had been knocked on the head and concussed that often.

I guess that keeping extra-careful track of things was not something that writers in those days necessarily trained themselves to do. [Anyone who has ever tried to draw plans of buildings in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sets the action of his Sherlock Holmes tales is faced with similar challenges.]

‘Aurélien Arkadiusz’

Aurélien wrote:
As a youngster, I found it a bit of a let-down - and others here have made this point before me - that as the 'Famous Five' series progressed, there was strangely little talk between Julian, Dick, George and Anne, comparing similar situations/scenarios from past adventures.....

Hmm, I don't think it's that strange, old son. Agatha Christie hardly ever had Poirot, Miss Marple or any other detective reminiscing about past crimes, I don't think old Sherlock ever went down memory road either. Although all of these are part of a much wider picture, each book seems to be written as if it were a one-off.

Well put, Moonraker me old chum.

If EB was entirely/largely self-taught as a writer - no doubt there will be a rush to enlighten me on that one - she would have had to discover for herself that any series of books takes one into a whole new realm, full of traps for the unwary. This is especially so where an author of her era either fell into writing a series without ever intending to or, which I suspect is the case with EB's Famous Five series, extended a series way beyond the number of books originally envisaged. One thinks of that well-flogged dead horse, the children's ages, and the challenge that continuing this series to 21 books gave both Enid Blyton and Eileen Soper.

These days intending writers can enrol in writer's courses which, or so I believe, spell out most of these series-writing pitfalls before they fall into them.

‘Aurélien Arkadiusz’

I think that the books were written so that each could be read completely independently of the others, hence the lack of references to earlier adventures. As a child I read the Five books completely randomly and would, I think, have found it rather off-putting and somewhat frustrating, to have continuous comments about earlier events. Having said that, I'm just having another Find-Outers re-read and they frequently mention previous mysteries at the beginning of some of the books. Personally I would find it a great challenge to contemplate writing one book, let alone envisaging a whole series!

I have just been told by my German contact who is kindly providing illustrations that the Five Find-Outers were the Six Hunt-Noses in Germany, so good old Buster must have been promoted!