Part one covered Five On a Treasure Island, and then part two was Five Go Adventuring Again and Five Run Away Together.

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Five Go to Smuggler’s Top

This is, of course, my absolute favourite so I was really really hoping he would like it.

We began with this cracker:

“Uh oh. I don’t think Sooty should come to Kirrin cottage. He might find out their secrets, like the secret passage to Kirrin Farm!”

Then he was surprised by Soper’s illustration of Aunt Fanny (despite her being shown in at least one earlier book). He pictured her looking like Ms Frizzle from the Magic School Bus Rides Again (without the lizard, probably). It seems he’s like me, in that his brain gives him a picture of a person in a book and then he’s stuck with it. I usually get someone with the same name, he’s just got someone with the same initial.

He was tricked by George when she pretend to go off to Smuggler’s Top without Timmy, but did think George was up to something – planning to catch a smuggler not sneaking Timmy with them. He did guess he was who they were picking up when the car stopped, though. “They’ll have to hide him somewhere outside!” 

He had questions about the illustration and the strange-looking car. I had to remind him this book is very old, which somehow led to a long discussion about people getting TVs for the coronation.

Then I had to try to describe a marsh to him, because he said “I know what marsh is, it’s what you get when you burn wood…” He meant ash. I think in the end I had to look up images of marshes on my phone so he understood.

After a bit of prompting he identified the secret passage in the illustration (why did they have to put so many illustrations way ahead of the matching text? Brodie gets very annoyed by this and keeps pointing it out when he notices!)

New words were learned, namely precipice and summit.

When Sooty says “ready?” to the Five, Brodie answered with an emphatic “YES”. His solution would be keeping Timmy in the cupboard the whole time. When Sooty’s door buzzed he gasped and said “It’s the step father!!” He thought that Mr Lenoir sounded very much like Uncle Quentin.

We went over precipice, summit and catacombs again later as he had forgotten what they meant. “Why are there so many complicated words in this book?” he asked, obviously not knowing that Blyton was criticized for her simple language.

I asked him and he said he would trust Sooty and would follow him into the catacombs, the rope ladder would be fine because he can climb the ladder into the loft and that’s quite high. Thinking ahead, as soon as they climbed back into Marybelle’s room he said “What about the furniture? They’ll have to move it back!”

I regularly ask him questions to see what he’s thinking –

Who’s signalling from the tower? “It must be Block!” (He was right of course, but I’m not sure if he worked it out or it was a wild guess.)

Where did the man go in Block’s room? “Out the window! Or he’s a magician, and he disappeared in a flash. I know, maybe he’s under the bed!… Or maybe there IS a secret passage in Block’s room.” Honestly, I can’t keep up with him sometimes!

When smugglers were coming across the marsh he had this epiphany – “That’s why it’s called Smuggler’s Top! Because there are smugglers!”

One night we ended on the cliffhanger of Timmy barking while Mr Lenoir is in the school room, he was not happy. (He pretty much always begs for one more chapter but on cliffhangers it’s even more desperate.)

The next night he was full of concern that the Five would get into trouble for having Timmy there. We had a long conversation about how lying is wrong and that’s why the Five don’t say that Timmy is with Alf. He thought that Aunt Fanny and Uncle Quentin would be worrying about where Timmy was – this is a good point, I can only assume they think he is with Alf/James.

He later asked me if we could get up in the middle of the night some time and look out the window because that would be like the Famous Five. He thought we might see a robber sneaking into our garden… The only thing we’d see in our garden at night is the fox, or at least I hope so.

He found it very tense when George was in Mr Lenoir’s study, shouting “Get out! Get out! George!! Get out!!” And “I think I know what’s going on now… it’s getting to the exciting part because we’re near the end.”

Sometimes he’s astute and at other times completely incomprehensible – “I think there’s some sort of mechanism. He (Block) is a robot. There’s some sort of chain reaction going on.”

For a while he was convinced that Uncle Quentin and Sooty were inside the window box, and, touchingly, he was concerned that it was a bit small for two people. Eventually he twigged that there was a secret passage there too.

He did guess that Block was screwing the lid back down, though. He was all for them waking the whole house that evening and it took a bit of explaining about them not trusting Mr Lenoir (as always though I spend ages explaining and then two paragraphs later Julian more succinctly says the same things anyway). He then wanted them to tell Sarah and we had a discussion about Mr Lenoir being in charge of the house and his staff wouldn’t keep secrets from him.

“Maybe Mr Lenoir isn’t on the bottom of things.”

Then there was a bit of an argument because he agreed with Julian about not letting the girls go to Mr Barling’s because to have an adventure you had to be strong and stay awake all night (there were other things on that list that I’ve forgotten) and girls aren’t as strong as boys… honestly the rubbish he picks up from adverts and TV shows and kids at school it makes me furious. But he did agree that George was very brave and capable.

After we finished I asked the usual questions. It was his favourite book so far and all of it was his favourite part – except maybe the end because it wasn’t so exciting after the adventure ended.

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Five Go Off in a Caravan

 

The night after we finished Smuggler’s Top he climbed up on the back of the sofa and took this one off the shelf himself, as a not so subtle hint that he wanted to start it. But then he thought he had picked the wrong one.

“No not this one, it doesn’t have a caravan on the front!”

I have the reprint dust jacket where they are underground – but it does have a bit of caravan on the spine.

He was sad that Sooty wasn’t in it because he liked Sooty. He said “Where’s Sooty?” in real surprise, and “I thought he’d be there. Who’s with them, then?”

About the elephant pulling a caravan he said “That’s not right!”

He didn’t know what a procession was – his guess was “a camping competition.”

Mrs Kirrin asking Anne if she’s been standing on her head because her hair is a mess prompted two whole minutes of hysterical laughter from him

He said he would choose the green caravan because green is his favourite colour. Which brings me to the realisation that I picture the caravans as white/cream, like today’s caravans, and not red or green.

He would also help with the chores, “I’d wash the dishes because I like getting my hands wet.” (He does actually like doing dishes, but they don’t usually get very clean, and more than just his hands get very wet.)

He thought Anne breaking the egg outside the cup was funny, that sitting outside the caravan was strange and that having to sit there guiding the horse would be boring. When George said she likes adventures he said “So do I. But I don’t know what adventurous thing they can find in the hills.”

One night  he had the book and pretended to read to me first but basically summarised what had happened earlier.

“And the caravans went away, pulled by the elephant. The boy who did cartwheels and his angry dad who said “Go and make me a coffee”.”

When Merran hills came into view he cried “Yessss! Now the adventure begins!” He thought Pongo was hilarious, wearing clothes, shaking paws, particularly with Timmy’s tail. This led to a long discussion over why you don’t see animals in circuses any more (though I just discovered that they have only just been banned in the UK in 2020).

Inspired by the Five Brodie had a camping session in the house during the school holidays. (We were under severe weather warnings so we couldn’t go anywhere!)

He packed a whole suitcase for this, and told me that I had to play “Mother” to help him.  Obviously I didn’t help enough as his case contained toothbrush, toothpaste, t-shirts, trousers, pyjamas, bottled water, marshmallows, sticks to toast them on, a toy camera and his tablet to play white noise at night. No underwear or torches though.  He then played as Anne making the food for camping.

That night he had a really quite intelligent idea –

“I know! They’re smugglers! There must be a trench under the ledge and there’s treasure they’ve smuggled there! That’s what the cart was all about!”

Then, after a pause.

“If I’m right then I’ve just spoiled the book for myself.”

I refused to tell him if he was right or not, though I did have to laugh at how serious he was about potentially spoiling the book for himself.

Further clever thinking led him to say that they shouldn’t stop and examine the treasure in the hill “because Tiger Dan and Lou the acrobat might come down behind them.” 

(Mind you, he also thought that the hollow for the caravans had stone walls and a roof so he’s not got a 100% success rate with the intelligent comments.)

He learned to say acrobat properly that night. Until then it came out as actorbat.

There was lots of laughter at Nobby saying “Yes, Ma,” to Anne, and at Pongo licking the honey from the jar. He asked “How much is he going to eat??” about the inspector with the bread and honey.

Then, after I read the last line of the book, he burst into tears because they were going home. Apparently it’s not a happy ending because they went home. But Caravan is now his favourite story, even more than Smuggler’s Top.

“How many more adventures can they have???” he asked in disbelief.

Well 16 actually…

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