When I was a child I had a fever.
My hands were like two balloons. Measles, I think it was; anyway, my grandparents came and scooped me up and off to their house (my mother, with two younger children, had "enough on"). There I recuperated, with lashings of jelly, mushroom soup and chocolate eclairs. And that was when my grandmother, stopping off at the library to get herself a Catherine Cookson, brought me together with the Famous Five. Books about adventurous kids doing adventurous things were just what the doctor ordered, especially as those kids were from a distant, sunlit, wholesome time. The stories of Julian, Dick and Anne, their cousin, tomboy George, and Timmy the dog were my introduction to the transporting quality of books - the first time I truly found a world within reading that I wanted to be a part of - and, in my imagination, I was.
I, too, spent holidays by the sea with smashing Aunt Fanny and stern Uncle Quentin, camping, hiking and staying on farms, not to mention catching an assortment of horrid criminals - spies, thieves and lots of smugglers - and having a terrific time finding treasure.
Some of my age-group friends were subscribers to Blyton's other young detective series, the Secret Seven, but those stories were mainly townie - no windswept cliffs, hidden coves and mysterious islands. I'll always be a Famous Five fan.
- Canvas
