Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The BEST Famous Five since 1963, 3 Sep 2008
This is a fantastic book for fans and collectors of the Famous Five, whatever their age. It is a handsome book, carefully and artistically produced. It is a thick hard-backed volume, 253 pages long, in full colour, and seemingly assembled with much love and respect as well as affection towards both Enid Blyton and the Famous Five.
The book is not only packed with plenty of articles on how to survive various situations, such as shipwrecks, being lost, crossing rivers, cracking codes,climbing rocks,spotting a liar, etc, but also contains a full-length new Famous Five story about a long lost treasure. The story portion of the book is excellently illustrated in full colour, in a style very reminiscent of the original 'Fives' illustrator, Eileen Soper.
Where this book really comes into its own, however, is the fact that the narrative isnt written by an author trying to emulate the style of Enid Blyton, so the style is never uncomfortably compared to that of the originals. It is supposedly a joint effort from the four human members of the Five themselves(now grown to adulthood) who experienced this mystery/adventure way back in 1959 but, unlike their other adventures, were unable to solve it at the time.
This clever ploy on behalf of the publishers fits in perfectly with the fact that Blyton never actually produced a 'Five' book in 1959 (the only year, between 1942 and 1963 that she failed to do so)
The 'Five' offer the reader a chance to solve the mystery for themselves, supplying them with all of the clues they collected as children: maps, plans, diary extracts etc, in order to do so. There are letters to read, codes to decipher, plans and maps to follow. Sometimes the special 'book marker' de-coder needs to be used, which, when placed over various letters etc enables the reader to discover secret messages hidden within larger pieces of text. It is a very cleverly written book, and a very welcome addition to the 21 'legitimate' books already written about the Famous Five by Enid Blyton.
This book deserves to be extremely popular, and is a brilliant example of just how good a 'continuation' novel can be if time and trouble is taken over its production.
Chorion and Hodder should be loudly applauded.
Robert Houghton (member of The Enid Blyton Society)
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What every adventurer needs, 25 May 2009
I bought this to read to my class of Year 4s. We are all thoroughly enjoying the story and the varied information. Several children have bought it since we started reading it in school. It has all the literary ingredients of the original Enid Blyton books that I grew up with combined with how modern youngsters would tackle similar adventures today. The inclusion of extracts from the Famous Five's diaries and letters is really clever and captures how I imagined the characters to be. We haven't finished it yet and I have to be very disciplined not to bring it home and finish it first! An excellent buy.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Every adventure's dream!, 1 Feb 2009
My 8 year old son loves this book! There is a famous five mystery to solve throughout the text, and there are great sections on everything from solving cypher codes to first aid, and escaping from quick sand to how to conduct an effective interview. We are all learning useful facts that have real life significance as well as having great fun actively solving the clues rather than just reading a story. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
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