Which Book, Which Series

[Judith Crabb]

I posted on 'The Adventure Series' topic that James Mustich chose 'Swallows and Amazons' above Blyton's Adventure series or Edith Nesbit's 'Treasure Seekers', not a choice either Anita or I agreed with. If you had to select one Enid Blyton title to encourage a child to become a dedicated reader of series, which title would you choose?
An easy one for me - 'The Valley of Adventure'. (I don't expect to be alone in that choice.)

[Barnard]

If a seven year old is being encouraged to read, the Secret Seven is probably a good starting point. The stories are shorter and simpler than the Adventure series which is probably better for a nine year old.
I, personally think that Enid Blyton, E Nesbit and Arthur Ransome are equally good.

[pete9012S]

Knight 1967 paperback, Betty Maxey external - Eileen Soper Illustrations


For me it was Five On A Treasure Island. It blew my young mind completely away because of the freedom the characters had.
The owned a boat, an island, swam underwater, they bought their own ice creams etc etc.

I initially thought it was just a standalone book as it was handed to me to read when I was very young.
It was the first book I read all by myself.

I was so sad to think I would never read about these fantastic characters ever again, until my parents told me it was from a series of books.
Hooray! There was no stopping me then from devouring the whole series in order.

I feel privileged that because I was born in the 1960's the whole set of twenty one books was ready and waiting for me to track down and read.

Having Eileen Soper & Betty Maxey versions available at the same time was obviously another fantastic bonus!!!

[Courtenay]

I've always been a big one for reading a series in order if possible, and Enid has some extremely strong starters in that regard:

Five on a Treasure Island — a mysterious (and rather proto-feminist) cousin who owns an island and an absolutely wonderful dog whom you can't NOT love (unless you're Uncle Quentin ), with all the excitement of exploring the ruined castle, seeing the wreck thrown up from the bottom of the bay, discovering the treasure in the dungeons — but the baddies are after it too... One of Enid's most ripping yarns ever, AND it introduces young readers to that most delightful term "Ingots". What's not to love?? It certainly got me into reading the Famous Five as a 7-year-old...

The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage — this wasn't my own introduction to the Find-Outers series (I think I read at least three others before it), but it really is one of the strongest titles in the series. A fine introduction to the whole concept of the detective story for young readers, handily supplying the definitions of "clues" (or "glues" ) and "suspects" and all the rest, and of course it's our first meeting with the remarkable, redoubtable, hilariously-but-deservedly immodest Frederick Algernon Trotteville. And old Clear-Orf! (Gah!) Most of the Find-Outers books are a treat (and I've seen commentators point out that they may serve to whet young readers' interest in Agatha Christie and the other great classic mystery writers later on), but Burnt Cottage is a fantastic start, with a twist in the mystery that I certainly didn't guess as a child (again, I was probably 7 or 8 when I first read it) — adults might, but probably very few younger readers would. Definitely a cracker!

The Island of Adventure — I know most of us rate Valley or Sea and maybe one or two others as our absolute favourites, but this is another series I first read in publication order — as a 30-something-year-old, having dismissed the books as "too grown up" when I was little! — and the first book is another absolute ripper. Another seaside adventure with a mysterious island and secret tunnels and flashing signals at night and other elements that Enid and plenty of other children's authors have done before, but Enid still manages to make it so fresh and exciting that I couldn't put the book down. One advantage of reading this as your first one is that — unless you've encountered spoilers on the EBS forums, which I had — you don't know anything about the enigmatic Bill Smugs on this first encounter with him... is he a friend or an enemy? There's also a more intense element of danger and threat in the Adventure series than in (I think) anything else Enid ever wrote, and this story has one of the most memorable and downright gripping examples of it towards the end, where the villain basically sentences our heroes to (not quite certain!) death. Hands down the best series Enid ever wrote — well, I think so, anyway — and the first book of it, while not quite the strongest in the series, is the best introduction. But not for really little children. I would definitely have been terrified by it as a 7-year-old!!

(Edit before posting: Ha, snap, Pete, re FOATI!! )

[Debbie]

It depends on the child as well as the age. I used to joke that I could look at a book and know immediately which child had left it there because they had different tastes.

I'd say:
#1 Five on a treasure Island: She loved adventure stories and solving the mysteries. She also liked to start at the beginning of a series and read through.
#2 The Secret island: She was frightened easily (wouldn't read FF for ages because it looked "scary" although once she'd started she read them all) and would have liked the gentleness of the island with no real enemies.
'#3 The Sea of Adventure: He wasn't bothered by reading in order, but liked adventure stories that were a little bit of "hide under the covers" plus he loves animals so would have loved the puffins etc. He also shares a name with one of them... and has Budgies but would like a parrot.

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

In the Ginger Pop Shop I would always recommend reading the first of a series to start with, to introduce the characters, but then said not to worry what order they were read in.

Some parents would drive me nuts by saying "s/he hasn't finished series x yet".

To be charitable, maybe the child had been given a box set, but to suggest that you can't read a nature book because you hadn't finished 15 detective stories seemed a bit odd to me!

Viv

[Boatbuilder]

I don't think I ever worried what order I read books in when I was a child, Viv. In fact, it doesn't even bother me now, despite the fact the the later books in a series might refer to something that happened in an earlier one. It can add to the intrigue until you do finally read the earlier book.

The book referred to in my signature below was the first book I ever read in that series, which, as it happens, turned out to be the final book in the series. It didn't spoil my enjoyment when I read all the other earlier ones.

[Judith Crabb]

What a pleasant surprise, Pete, finding out that you had twenty still to read in the Fives series!
The question of order is a tricky one. Sometimes authors have not entirely hit the right note in a first in a series. This is not usually the case with Enid Blyton, although when some fifty years ago I recommended the Five Find-Outers to the daughter of a friend and lent her 'Burnt Cottage' she didn't ask for any more, though she had just devoured the 'Adventure' series, more than once. I do think the Five Find-Outers improve on acquaintance as Fatty takes over, in so many ways. The same friend recently gave her great-grand-daughter a copy of 'A Little Bush Maid' by Mary Grant Bruce in a modern, lavishly-illustrated edition, but confided to me that she herself, though addicted to the 'Billabong' series as a child, didn't much like this first one in the series. I hope the great-grand daughter disagrees.

[Boodi 2]

Sometimes authors have not entirely hit the right note in a first in a series. This is not usually the case with Enid Blyton, although when some fifty years ago I recommended the Five Find-Outers to the daughter of a friend and lent her 'Burnt Cottage' she didn't ask for any more, though she had just devoured the 'Adventure' series, more than once. I do think the Five Find-Outers improve on acquaintance as Fatty takes over, in so many ways.

I never read the books in chronological order as I read whatever was available in our local bookshop. Hence my first FFO book was "Invisible Thief", which has remained one of my favourites. However, when I finally got around to reading "Burnt Cottage" I remember being slightly disappointed so was interested to see the point above.

[Splodj]

My impression of the FFO books is that it takes until the 5th (Missing Necklace) for the formula to become fully developed - and thereafter it is prevented from going stale by boosters like Ern, ventriloquism and Eunice.

So you can either read them in order and grow with the series, or start with a later one to sample the full fare.

[Bertie]

If I'm planning to read the whole series of books then I'll generally read them in order (occasionally skipping a book or so if I'm less fond of it).
I think that's probably a continuation of my introduction to books, listening my mum read Enid Blyton first to my older brothers, then me, when I was very young. We always went from series to series, working our way through them chronologically. And I've generally carried on doing that, and do so with PG Wodehouse as well. Though there's also plenty of times when I feel like randomly reading just one specific book from a series.

As regards the actual question of the thread, I'd say Five on a Treasure Island is a great introduction to the Famous Five. And The Island of Adventure is a strong introduction to that series. But I'd maybe recommend Spiteful Letters or Missing Necklace for the Find-Outers, as I think they're more representative of the series as a whole than the first 3 books - and are much stronger and wittier books that do the great series more justice.

[John Pickup]

I'll bang the drum for the Secret Seven series again and recommend the first book, The Secret Seven as ideal encouragement for a child to become immersed into reading.
They were the first books by Enid that I read and over 60 years later, I'm still a fan. The first six books in particular have short but exciting adventures. Eventually I progressed to the Famous Five and the Adventure books but my introduction to the Secret Seven nurtured a love of books that has never waned.

[timv]

Like Pete, I would put Five On A Treasure Island first as the ideal way to get a child into reading more books, especially a series - though I suppose it depends to a degree on the age. In my case I read Treasure Island first of the Five books, aged seven or eight in the mid-late 1960s, and had the wonderful Eileen Soper cover and internal illustrations - though by the time I got onto the later FF books the newer ones had the Betty Maxey internal illustrations (complete with 'pop star' Uncle Quentin which caused some amusement!). The Soper covers for the early Five books are brilliant for giving the atmosphere of what is inside the book - eg the children looking down into the sea off the island in TA, the marshes and Smugglers Top hilltop in ST, the boys carrying the box taken from the Sticks across the castle courtyard in Run Away Together, and the chimp in Go Off In A Caravan. Later, Yan pointing out the smugglers light out to sea in the dark cave-entrance in Go Down To The Sea. The later cover illustrators didn't quite seem to catch the atmosphere 'in a nutshell' as well; there is a special craft to doing covers and the modern cartoony covers seem to have abandoned that and are clearly trying to be amusing and 'catchy' for younger readers used to (usually American) TV cartoons.

I read most of the other series in non-chronological order so I had to figure out who was who to a certain degree and was puzzled by a few references to past events - I started the Adventure series with Circus, ie book 7, then went on to book 1 ie Island, and started the Secret series with Spiggy Holes (no. 2), the Galliano's Circus series with Hurrah for the Circus (2), and the Find-Outers with Vanished Prince. But that depended on what books were available when, usually in the Armada series. Luckily these were almost all available over the year or two after I started reading Blyton so I didn't have to wait long - though I read most of the family 'one-offs' and Shadow in the yellow hardback early 1960s editions, as I had done the Brer Rabbit books earlier.

[timv]

Edit: 1960s Armada FF covers which I am referring to were by Betty Maxey not Eileen Soper - I get confused because they're so unlike the later internal illustrations that she did of the middle FF books , where the clothes and hairstyles are much more modern than in the early books!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Interesting posts. Like several other forumites, I'd choose The Secret Seven for a younger child or Five on a Treasure Island for an older child. Both those titles make a fine introduction to the mystery/adventure genre.

As the books in the Adventure series are longer, with more involved plots, I'd recommend coming to them after having read a few books from Enid Blyton's other mystery/adventure series.