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These kids would probably grow up into adults where they would marry and cheat and birth the type of kids that they despised when they themselves were children. He takes a lot of control around the Sticks and begins to really take control and organise the Five in a way we haven’t seen before, as they’ve always had the steadying guide of Aunt Fanny in the background. But I use these as teaching moments - how people have learned to see, do and say things differently.
Comic side relief is provided by the continued tormenting of young Master Stick whose parents the Five are going to have jailed. Blyton knew how to build mystery and intrigue, and still managed to surprise me with a twist, albeit a sinister one. However, these days many places have removed them (usually through gunboat diplomacy) but they are a measure to protect a country's manufacturing base. If I remember it right, this is not the only hospitalization of Aunt Fanny, so in the other sequels she very well could have had an ulcer from worrying so much about Quentin or a gallbladder removal. In fact I couldn't get enough of them and even jumped over to the Secret Seven when there were no more Famous Five books to read.
I lost count how many times I’ve read this particular book, and re-reading it as an adult still does not bores me. My favorite part is when Dick, Julian and George hide out in the dungeons and make animal noises to scare the Sticks. These anniversary editions of the classic texts of Enid Blyton's best-known series benefit the House of Illustration, the world's first dedicated home for the art of illustration.
Aunt Fanny - re-christened as Aunt Francis - is not taken sick, she goes to visit a friend, who needs support having broken her leg. From the off, when Julian, Dick, and Anne arrive and we are introduced to Mrs Stick, we know she has to be a baddie. The short chapters are filled with descriptions of food, glorious loaves of bread, ginger beer, tinned pineapples and peaches in sweet juice, sardines, roast chickens, fresh tomatoes, jam tarts, meat pies and treacle tarts. There was a recurrent threat of animal violence, with the characters encouraging their dog to attack a smaller one! I remain convinced Enid Blyton secretly wanted to be a food critic, as food was as much a character as anyone.
When the children arrive at Kirrin Cottage for the holidays they find Aunt Fanny poorly and the kitchen handed over to the awful Mrs Stick. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. These days one simply cannot hire anybody off the street to look after children, and if one does so without performing the proper checks, then one could also get oneself in trouble.
The children are constantly abandoned because of poor health, bad memory, or benevolence neglect, generally into the hands of villains. Baddies are often encountered there (The Sticks in this book), sometimes rowing there in the dead of night. Of course all the adults as fine with unsupervised 11 year old George rowing across open sea and through said rocks with her cousins.From this point of view, Julian’s put down, sharp attitude to the Sticks is justified, and their treatment of Edgar (who is about as pleasant as his mother is) makes more sense.
We started to make jokes about Famous Five “All the do is picnic and talk about how delicious their apples are. She wrote over 700 books and 2,000 short stories, including favourites such as The Famous Five, The Secret Seven , The Magic Faraway Tree and Malory Towers. In some German books from the 30’s to early 60’s the mothers in childrens books went to the hospital, because of cancer or because of some lung disease which must have been very common after WW II. In a way this is very much Julian’s book, which is probably why it was my favourite when I was younger, because it feels very Juliancentric. Enid Blyton's books are beloved the world over and The Famous Five have been the perennial favourite of her fans.Being such a (movies and books) location fan, “Five run away together” is one of my favorite FF sequels as it takes place on Kirrin Island.
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