Listened to in audio format.

I loved Enid Blyton as a child and I remember reading the Secret Seven and the Five Findouters with fondness.

The St Clare's Series is based around twins Pat and Isobel O'Sullivan and their friends.  I love these books they are so innocent, with the girls enjoying midnight feasts and playing tricks on Mamzelle the French teacher.

The new term begins with some new characters.   Claudine, Mamzelle's niece, Eileen whose mother is matron and Right Hon Angela.  Claudine is a great addition to the series, although she  is Mamzelle's niece she shamelessly copies other girls work and is not above being naughty to get out of games.  When the girls have a midnight feast and matron discovers them Claudine locks her in a cupboard.   Maybe the books are not so innocent after all, more like a inner city comprehensive.

I appreciate these books are old fashioned, from another century in fact, but the stories are just as relevant today.  I highly recommend Enid Blyton to all young bookworms.

This was my first ever novel - I had the version that had a few pictures throughout it.
It was given to me on my fifth birthday by my granma and I loved it - it got me started on all of the old style mystery books (Famous Five, Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden and a few Hardy Boys books) and the rest of the Enid Blyton books.

I've had this book for more than fifteen years in my bookcase now; I bought this when I was a child, for English reading program at my school back then. However, sometimes I'd reread it again if I wanted some classic light reading. As an adult, reading the book makes you remember the thoughts and imaginations that you may have thought; toys that live during the night after we go to our bed, goblins in the ancient times, giants and pixies. Each stories weren't too long and yet memorable, and the fonts were large enough so the book would not look like 'too long and boring' to kids in 3rd grade and above that wanted to grow an interest in reading. 

Well, here I am sitting in a car driving back to Melbourne (actually, to be precise I am in the passenger seat – my Dad is driving – even though the car has cruise control doesn't mean that I can write a book review and drive at the same time). Anyway, this is the last of the Famous Five books, and the last of the Enid Blyton books that I have slated to read (and no, the Naughtiest School Girl won't be one of those books I end up reading in the future, though knowing my luck I'll probably end up eating my words sometime in the future as I end up writing a review of it down the track).

So, the Five come together for one last adventure (though there is a suggestion at the end of the book that it might not be their last adventure, however we do know that after this one Enid Blyton didn't write any more), and they once again return to Kirin Cottage, which also means a return to Kirin Island. However there is a problem – George's house keeper has come down with scarlet fever, which means the house is under quarantine, so they have to go and stay somewhere else, namely at Tinker's house (the kid that loves going around pretending he is a motor car). Of course they stumble onto an adventure (halfway through the book), and end up solving it (I should have said spoiler alert however I think we all know what to expect from a mystery book).

What I did think about as I was reading this book was what happened to the Famous Five after this. Well since this is the last of their adventures I was contemplating that this was going to be the last time they all got together. First of all Timmy is a dog which means that he is probably getting old and would have to be put down sooner of later (much to George's horror), so my theory is that this is what happens between now and the next set of holidays. Julian, being the oldest, graduates from school and heads off to college (we'll say Oxford for arguments sake) where he graduates with a law degree and then ends up working at Scotland Yard.

As for Dick, well he ends up getting a scholarship at an American Ivy League university where he studies science and becomes a forensic scientist (for the FBI obviously). George ends up following him over, however she takes a different path and ends up getting involved in the social revolution and the sexual liberation movement (due to her desire to be a boy). She doesn't necessarily go off the rails though, as she ends up graduating and becoming a vet. As for Anne, and I know this is going to sound a little sexist, but when we consider the context of the stories this isn't surprising – she marries and becomes a housewife.

I did note that they have a new generation of the Famous Five running around with modern gadgets such as laptops, however I would have to say that they would be more like the grandchildren of the original Famous Five as opposed to their children (the children of the Famous Five would have been children of the 80s). It is also interesting how the new lot seemed to have some specialist skill sets where as the original characters didn't seem to have any specific skill sets. Anyway, that is enough of my theorising and it is probably time now to go and do something else (like have a bit of a snooze).

Well, here we have it, the final Secret Seven book that I needed to read to complete the entire Secret Seven series (and as I have said a number of times previously since I hadn't read the entire series when I was I kid I can't really put it down as a reread). That leaves only one more Enid Blyton book to read when I can say that I have finally completed all the books of hers that I have wanted to read (and I am really going to resist the temptation to grab the Amelia Jane and Naughtiest Schoolgirl books). Anyway, you can blame Goodreads for this goal simply because back in the days when I first signed up to the site I was looking for as many books as possible to inflate the number of books that I had read, and of course the Enid Blyton books came to mind. Well, I think my have-read list is inflated enough, but then again I guess one can argue that there is never enough books on your have-read list, though I do note that one's to read list always seems to grow faster (and I ordered another eight books from the internet last night).

So, in this story the Secret Seven are on school holidays, but while they have some free time to devote to their secret society, they don't actually have a mission, that is until Colin learns that his next door neighbour has had all of his medals stolen. Well, stolen medals surely equates to an exciting mystery. However the other children also discover that some rather naughty people have been stealing eggs from bird nests in the forest and scaring off all the birds, so it looks like there are two mysteries a foot (not that fighting off poachers is a mystery, more like security detail). However, as it turns out, the poachers are none other than mischievous children. However, as they quickly discover, dealing with naughty children, and dealing with adult criminals, is a whole different ball game (for some reason in Blyton's world adult criminals don't actually harm children – they just tie them up and set a guard dog on them, or simply lock them in a room where there happens to be a way out).

Anyway, I noticed in this book that the SS descriptor of their club seems to be used quite regularly, and I don't know if it was me, or the book, but every time I saw the letters SS, it seemed to look more and more like the SS that we all know and hate. Okay, it was probably just me, but I still sort of wonder about these books, especially the modern incarnations. The version that I read had a section at the back about starting up our own secret society (though this was only a section as they are spread across the entire collection). It sort of makes me wonder what is going on with these series, especially the modern ones.

It sort of reminds me of what happens in fascist governments, or even not so fascist governments. The idea of getting children to act as agents of the government, even if the government happens to be the local police, is one of the signs of a totalitarian regime. Not only did it happen during the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, it also occurred during the 1950s in America where school children were encouraged to sniff out any nefarious, or suspicious, activity. This was much more pronounced in Nazi Germany though because not only where children encouraged to dob in their parents to the authorities, but there was also the establishment of Hitler Youth, which was designed to indoctrinate the young. While one may suggest that such organisations do not exist in out society, I will have to point to the scouts, which is one of the throwbacks from the British Empire. The organisation was established by the British Army Officer Baden Powell, and there are a lot of ceremonies where you pledge your allegiance to the monarch. I even remember movies back when I was a kid where they had Gary Coleman playing an adventurous scout, no doubt to encourage children to follow in his footsteps.

Now, I'm not suggesting that Enid Blyton was trying to groom a nation of children who would act as the eyes and the ears of the local constabulary, but the thing is what better way of being about to keep your ear to the ground. Children tend to be seen and not heard, and most people generally don't pay all that much attention to them. As such they end up making the perfect spies, especially if they are reading these books and themselves wanting to go on similar great adventures. However, one needs to be aware that they can also get themselves into a lot of trouble. Mind you, while I loved the Secret Seven and Famous Five as a kid I hardly wanted to run off and bust real crooks – I could do that on my Dad's computer out in the back shed.