A recent comment on the blog has inadvertently inspired this post. A regular reader pointed out that I had written Five Have a Wonderful Time when I actually meant Five Fall Into Adventure. It wasn’t that I had confused the plots of the two books, but I had confused the titles. Wonderful Time, Fall Into Adventure along with Plenty of Fun are particularly vague titles which give no clue as to the plot of the stories and are the three I mix up the most.

And so, while walking to work one morning after the comment politely pointing out my error I started writing (in my head) a review of all the Famous Five book titles complete with star ratings. As is always the case my written review will never match the witty brilliance of what I can come up with when I have no pen and paper, but I’ll do my best here.

I’ll also try to come up with some alternative titles – though this is very hard and I don’t think I can actually come up with anything better!

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Five on a Treasure Island

I think there are a few things that are important about a book title – besides being catchy. One is that it should give prospective readers an inkling of what the book will be about, and the other is that it should be sufficiently descriptive to differentiate it from other books in a series, or from the same author.

Five on a Treasure Island does both of these things. While the children visit Kirrin island several other times in the series it is only the first book where there is treasure to be found.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Five Go Adventuring Again

This is a rather vague title. Given that the Five have twenty adventures after Treasure Island, this could really apply to any of those!

I don’t have an issue remembering this one, for some reason. Perhaps as it’s only book two and I can confidently name the order of books 1-6, though the rest I wouldn’t remember in order.

Is there a better title? I’m not very good at coming up with titles but perhaps Five Have a Winter Adventure? Five Get Snowed In? Five Go Up Against a Thief? We are  a bit limited if we want to stick to the Five Go/Have/On/Get format. Otherwise how about Five and the Stolen Papers?

One thing we have to consider is that Blyton only intended the series to run for six books. Although this doesn’t help greatly with telling prospective readers what the book is about it would have helped with keeping the titles straight in our minds. Of course Blyton was such a phenomenon that by book two I’m sure children would have read Five Have a Mildly Interesting Time, Five Play Chess or Five Go to the Shops anyway.

With that in mind, Five Go Adventuring Again would score more highly had the series ended with book six. Thankfully for us it didn’t.

⭐⭐

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Five Run Away Together

This is definitely less vague. Although the Five do go off all sorts of places together this is the only time they do it in secret, the only time they actually run away. (The Five all have loving parents and comfortable homes – what on earth could they be running away from? I imagine children crying on first seeing this title.)

This could have been called Five on Kirrin Island Again, really, as it is probably the book with the second-most amount of time spent on the island. However run away is more evocative of the plot.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Five Go to Smuggler’s Top

A perfect title. Enough said?

You know I can’t miss an opportunity to expound on my favourite book from the series. It’s a simple title, telling you they go somewhere called Smuggler’s Top. This title makes it perfectly clear which plot goes with it, and the mere mention of smugglers is sure to attract readers.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Five Go Off in a Caravan

Our third Go title. It’s not terribly vague – although the Five stay in caravans in (let me think for a moment…) Wonderful Time they go to the caravans, not Go Off in them.

The only issue is that there are two caravans. Five Go Off in Caravans, admittedly, doesn’t have the same ring to it, but that’s probably because I’ve been reading the real title for over 30 years. Had the book come out as In Caravans I’m sure it would sound perfectly fine to me.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Five on Kirrin Island Again

While this doesn’t exactly describe the plot in detail, I’m struggling to think of anything else that would work. Five and the Underground Explosives? Five and the Undersea Tunnel? Five Save Kirrin Island?

As this was meant to be the final book of the series it probably worked quite well as it is – beginning with Treasure Island and ending on the island again. The Again also makes a pattern with Adventuring Again.

However, with ? more books featuring visits to Kirrin Island it isn’t the most unique title.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Five Go Off to Camp

This one does half a good job at telling us what the book is about. The Five indeed go camping, or rather off to camp to fit in with the (varying) format of the other book titles.

However, they do camp in several books. If you’re only classifying camping as staying in tents then they do this in Get Into Trouble, Secret Trail, Billycock Hill and Together Again, though they sleep out in ruined rooms, caves, cellars, and quarries in at least four other books.

What are our other options then?

Five and the Spook Train? 

Five and the Black-Marketeers?

Five Go Off to Camp by a Haunted Railway?

I can’t think of anything that really fits the loose style for the titles (there are no Five and the Blank titles in the original run, but I’m sure there are some in the Claude Voiler continuations).

⭐⭐⭐

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Five Get Into Trouble

Despite describing the plot of practically every single Famous Five book, I generally know which one this is. For some reason the cover of the Knight Paperback comes firmly into mind when I see the title and I know that the gates are at Owl’s Dene and therefore which story it is.

I suppose they didn’t want to call it Five Go to Owl’s Dene because that would give away too much as the Five work out where Dick has been taken.

Five Get Kidnapped? Short, snappy, and mostly accurate. Dick is certainly kidnapped. The others more or less do break into Owl’s Dene and are held against their will – but is that strictly kidnapping? (Research tells me that no, it is not as kidnapping involves carrying someone away – it would be false imprisonment however. But as we had Caravan and not Caravans earlier, then I’m sure the inaccuracy of kidnapping would be allowed.)

Five and the Black Bentley? KMF 102 is a fairly iconic and memorable part of the book after all. Or Five and the Escaped Prisoner? perhaps that gives too much away. I know – Five Go Off on Their Bikes! 

⭐

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Five Fall Into Adventure

As I said at the top of this post, this is one of the titles I regularly mix up. The Five fall into adventure 21 times, this could be literally any book – it’s as if Blyton took the previous title and ran it through a thesaurus.

Five Tumble Into Peril
Five Plunge Into Intrigue
Five Get Into a Spot of Bother
Five Don’t Go Looking For Trouble.

You get the idea.

I try to remember that Timmy FALLS from the cliff into the sea near the end of the book, and picture the dust jacket image of that scene to help but I can’t always remember to do this.

This title neither tells you (specifically) what the book is about, nor does it really help you recall it afterwards.

So what could this one be called?

If we chose Five Get Kidnapped to replace Five Get Into Trouble, we could have Only Two of the Five Gets Kidnapped This Time?… Five Minus Two? Or perhaps Five On a Wild Goose Chase? If we didn’t have to have Five at the start we could call it Jo Saves the Day!

⭐

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Five on a Hike Together

This one is just about descriptive enough. The Five do go on lots of explorations but this is their only walking holiday. It doesn’t tell you an awful lot about what to expect, but the alternatives like Five Go to Gloomy Water/Two Trees, Five on a Treasure Lake, Five Search for the Saucy Jane all give away a bit too much and would spoil some of the impact of the first reading of Two Trees. Gloomy Water. Saucy Jane. And Maggie knows. 

⭐⭐⭐

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Do you agree, or disagree, with any of my ratings? Do you have any better ideas for possible titles? Let me know in the comments below!