The Enid Blyton Society

I love these short famous five adventures

are there any more in the old sunny stories magazine?

Not sure if you actually read that story from a Sunny Stories magazine, if not I may be preaching to the converted, however just in case you are unaware ......

have you got hold of the book "Five Have a Puzzling Time and other Stories"??? This paper back, published in 1995, has 8 Famous Five short stories taken from the Sunny Stories Magazine. They are:

Five has a Puzzling Time
George's Hair is Too Long
Good Old Timmy
A Lazy Afternoon
Well done, Famous Five
Five and a half-term Adventure
Happy Christmas, Five
When Timmy chased the Cat.

I didnt know this book existed until about 3 weeks ago when it popped up on ebay.

Hope this may be helpful to you.

Lee

Hello Lee and Kirrin - just to clear up a point on the Famous Five short stories, none of the eight came from either Sunny Stories or Enid Blyton's Magazine - though four did come from Magazine Annuals. Of the other four, two were in Princess Annuals, one in Princess Magazine (four consecutive issues) and one was written exclusively for Australian readers as it appeared in a Weeties Strip Book, given away as a free gift in a cereal packet in the 50s - this was Well Done, Famous Five which was only published for the first time in this country in Five Have a Puzzling Time - though it did have an earlier appearance in one of our programmes for The Enid Blyton Society Day!

Best wishes and keep posting
Tony

yes I have the red fox edition thanks!

Hi!
Thanks for letting people know about
'Five Have a Puzzling Time and other Stories'
Went straight to eBay and bought a copy on buy it now.
I would never have realised there was a compilation of short stories to contiue the story!
Thanks

Thanks muchly, Tony, for explaining the origins of those 8 Famous Five short stories in that 1995 Red Fox (Random House) paperback, 'Five Have a Puzzling Time'. I've printed off the details you gave to slip into the book.

I bought my copy late last month (Oct. '08)for NZ$5.00 - found it just prowling the shelves in an Auckland second-hand bookshop - and there was no mention in the back-cover blurb of where they'd been first published.

‘Aurélien Arkadiusz’

Nearly four years has passed since Tony's post. I wonder what the record is? I must re-visit the earlier threads when I've time on my hands, I bet there's a wealth of entertainment to be found in the cellars!

Moonraker thoughtfully pondered:

I must re-visit the earlier threads when I've time on my hands, I bet there's a wealth of entertainment to be found in the cellars!

Oh, there is, Moonraker, there definitely is!

* Suddenly struck by the truly awful thought of what his turgid ramblings will read like, even 3 months down the track, the aging Aurélien staggers off to hit a few delete buttons... *

Edit: * ...but not on Lenoir's 'Cherrys' thread, Moonraker *

Coincidentally I have just recently taken delivery of a copy of Five Have a Puzzling Time though I have so far only read one of the stories. I hope to tackle the others sometime this weekend but I have been rather busy with work lately. Its a great pity that Soper did not do any illustrations for these stories. Speaking of the illustrations I notice that in the Cave of Books a David Kearney is listed as the illustrator whereas in my copy of the book a Hemesh Alles is credited as the illustrator! Did one maybe do the cover and the other the internal drawings?

Lucky Star wrote:Coincidentally I have just recently taken delivery of a copy of Five Have a Puzzling Time though I have so far only read one of the stories. I hope to tackle the others sometime this weekend but I have been rather busy with work lately. Its a great pity that Soper did not do any illustrations for these stories. Speaking of the illustrations I notice that in the Cave of Books a David Kearney is listed as the illustrator whereas in my copy of the book a Hemesh Alles is credited as the illustrator! Did one maybe do the cover and the other the internal drawings?

Soper's illustrations accompanied the stories in the 'Magazine Annuals'. it's a pity they didnt use them in the Red Fox paperback, though, I agree, as the modern illustrations are bland by comparison.

What´s about Soper's illustrations accompanied the stories in the 'Magazine Annuals'?
Could we see it in somewhere?
Are these illustrations original for this stories or just discards from another Five Books?

Thank you!

PS: This week I talk with Editorial Juventud (Spanish publishers of Famous Five) about this book and... they don´t know nothing about!
They call to Chorion about this book.

Regards,

Hello Oscar, you will see from our Cave of Books that there were eight short Famous Five stories in 'Five Have a Puzzling Time'. Five of them were originally illustrated by Eileen Soper, but the three stories from Princess were all illustrated by Eric Parker.

The illustrations from the Weeties strip book are very small, but the four stories in the Magazine Annuals have 39 Soper illustrations and they were all done especially for the stories and have not been used anywhere else. Most of the illustrations are printed in two colours in a similar way to the Magazine illustrations for Five Go Down to the Sea which you can see in the Further illustrations in the Cave.

I will probably add these illustrations at some stage, but I still have a great many illustrations to add in the Novels section.

I hope this information helps.

Hello Tommy! Really you´re an human database!!
Thank you very much, two days ago I bought this book but I haven´t yet in my hands.

Best wishes,

Just a footnote to this thread, I was a regular reader of Princess comic, and have the two annuals in which the Famous Five short stories appear, was anyone else a reader and remembers 'The Happy Days', 'Circus Ballerina' or 'Life with Uncle Lionel'? I've found some wonderful old adverts for Princess on another website, I will post a link in a new thread when I have the time.

Kate.