Enid Blyton’s Five Run Away Together is a summer holiday mystery for 9 year olds, and it’s the third time the Famous Five land themselves in trouble.<\/p>\n
George has been counting the days until her cousins arrive. Julian, Dick and Anne tumble off the train, Timmy nearly knocks Anne over, and everybody shouts their news at once.<\/p>\n
The plan is a good one. A whole week living on Kirrin Island, which belongs to George, and which she has already divided into four so the others can have a share. Timmy shares hers.<\/p>\n
Things at Kirrin Cottage are not right, though. George’s mother keeps saying she doesn’t feel very well and spends her days lying on the sofa. Her father is worried about it, which makes him even shorter with everyone than usual.<\/p>\n
And there’s a new cook. Mrs Stick is sour-faced and does everything with a bad grace. Her son Edgar hangs around the garden singing “Georgie-porgie, pudding and pie” until George goes red. Her dog smells so awful that George has renamed him Stinker.<\/p>\n
The interesting bit is how much George has to swallow. Normally she’d have gone for Edgar in about four seconds. Instead she holds herself in, because if Mrs Stick walks out her mother will have to do all the cooking and cleaning herself.<\/p>\n
You can feel what that costs her. She still feels “frightfully fierce” down inside, as she puts it, and having to sit on it is almost worse than the teasing.<\/p>\n
Then they finally row out to the island, and somebody has been there before them.<\/p>\n
Two things to flag before they start. There’s a real dog fight in the second chapter. Timmy bites a piece off the other dog’s ear, Mrs Stick swings a saucepan at Timmy and catches her own dog instead, and Edgar picks up a stone to throw before Anne screams at him. It’s broken up with a garden hose and nobody is seriously hurt, but it’s rougher than most children’s books go now.<\/p>\n
The other thing is that this is a book of its time. George wants to be a boy, keeps her hair cut short and is delighted that the fishermen call her Master George. Blyton clearly means it kindly. Some of the wording around it still lands oddly today, and a reader who asks questions about that sort of thing will probably ask you a few.<\/p>\n
Is your reader new to the Five? Five on a Treasure Island is the one where Julian, Dick and Anne first turn up at Kirrin Bay to stay with a lonely cousin who refuses to answer to Georgina. This book keeps glancing back at it, especially the old wreck and the gold they found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Enid Blyton’s Five Run Away Together is a summer holiday mystery for 9 year olds, and it’s the third time the Famous Five land themselves in trouble. George has been counting the days until her cousins arrive. Julian, Dick and Anne tumble off the train, Timmy nearly knocks Anne over, and everybody shouts their news […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11117,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":7433,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Five on a Treasure Island","lr_seo_hook":"A ruined holiday, a horrible new cook and a week alone on the island."},"book_tag":[22],"age_group":[24],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[309],"class_list":["post-7435","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-mystery-books","age_group-books-for-9-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-enid-blyton"],"yoast_title":"Five Run Away Together by Enid Blyton | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A ruined holiday, a horrible new cook and a week alone on the island. For ages 9+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n