Ghost Trains! What A Great Memory Of Childhood (The Famous Five: Five Go Off to Camp - Enid Blyton)

Member Name: GramiWay

Product:	The Famous Five: Five Go Off to Camp - Enid Blyton
Date:	31/07/09 (131 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Strong story, interesting plot

Disadvantages: Usual stereotyped characters

I was pretty spooked as a child when I read the seventh instalment in Enid Blyton's Famous Five series. 'Five Go Off To Camp', is extremely creepy and was enough to send shivers down my spine! Looking back now, pretty much anything used to scare me but alas...

The Famous Five series revolves around Julian, Dick, Georgina [or George as she demands to be known], Anne and Timmy the dog. Blyton's writing style and way with words appeals to younger readers catapulted the books to become a huge success spawning twenty-one stories about her heroes in all as well as countless television revivals and further plans currently in consideration to make a futuristic animated version!

Despite book six 'Five on Kirrin Island Again' being considered as the final book in the series, Blyton bounces back with one of the collection's finer moments.

'Five Go Off To Camp' takes place in the summer holidays and the children are preparing to go camping on some moorlands. Their parents will let them do such a thing? Well as long as they take along one of Julian and Dick's teachers, Mr Luffy. A very strange, bewildered man who is often in dreamland and loves to do nothing more than research insects. Hardly a responsible adult, but still a very interesting, adult character to include in the story as Blyton rarely explores them too deeply.

However, not all is quiet and peaceful on the moors as the Five have stumbled head first into more trouble. A farm near the moors that has tonnes of lorries and expensive equipment just a few years after the second world war demolished Britain plays a pivotal part and it all seems to revolve around an abandoned train yard, inhabited by a peg-legged man called Stan who warns them of 'the spook trains'. When he tells his story, it really is very tense and you feel the goosebumps descending up and down your arms which is a credit to Enid's ability to weave a good ghost story just as much as anything else.

Of course the boys and George are excited by this and vow to go down to the train yard one night and see if they can spot 'the spook train'. Meanwhile, the children's relationship with the farmer's son Jock deepens and it seems as if his step father is responsible for the so-called 'spook trains' and the dangerous underground adventure the Five find themselves dragged into.

Blyton shines as always when describing nature and the moors and she really pulls you in with beautiful descriptions of everything the characters see. Her talent for taking the same formula for each book and just adjusting some of the features keeps making more and more interesting reads. The criminal's plots get darker and the Five find themselves being thrown into more and more danger with every book's climax. Blyton knows how to give her reader a suspense filled read and the corny outdated language that pops up in certain places aside, most children will warm to the simple easy words that bounce off the page. Just be warned that if a child comes to you and asks you what certain words mean that you better be careful what you reply with :P

Summary: Book 7 in the Famous Five series