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Friday, October 19, 2007

Five Go Down to Mordor

I have an automatic alert set up with Google that informs me of any Google-listed blogs or articles that have the phrase "Enid Blyton" in them. Very handy; I get about five a day, each containing 1-3 links. Over half the links are worthless, just a tiny mention of the author's name and that's all. But some are full length articles, well worth a read.

There was a mention of Enid Blyton on a blog where the blogger was conducting a 50-book reading challenge. I've seen many of these and almost all of them list an Enid Blyton somewhere. I guess this is the laws of statistics at work; with so many books in her name, surely one of them is going to make it onto the list!

Anyway, this particular blog post made me laugh as the description reads:

#37 The Valley of Adventure — Enid Blyton
There was a huge storm where I'm currently living and I desperately needed a new book to read. Much in the style of the Fantastic Five. Nothing particularly special.

Gasp! Nothing particularly special...? Well, each to our own, I suppose. But what made me laugh was the reference to the Fantastic Five. There's no such gang, of course; this is most likely the Famous Five. But I find it amazing that The Valley of Adventure can be likened to a Famous Five. I suppose from an "outsider's" point of view this may be true — the style of one Blyton book might be much like another to someone who doesn't read many of them and isn't a fan. But of course well-read Blytonites will know that the far-flung adventures of Philip, Dinah, Jack, Lucy-Ann and Kiki aren't anything like the homebound escapades of Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy, despite the fact that both series are about four kids (two boys, two girls) and their pet having adventures on their own and defeating bad guys while finding treasures and...

Wait a minute. Maybe the blogger has a point after all.

In any case, I did have a moment of hilarity as I read "Fantastic Five" and came up with a vision in my head — not of Julian, Dick, George and Anne but of Reed, Johnny, Ben and Sue. The Fantastic Four were my all-time favorite superheroes as a kid, along with Spider-Man; sadly only the Spider-Man movies were any good.

But anyway, I had this crazy vision of Julian with super-long stretchy arms that he could wrap protectively around his brother, sister and cousin. I saw Dick bursting into flame and soaring off into the sky. (Hmm, why did I associate Dick with Johnny?) I saw George, a gender-vague creature with a lot of built-up anger, bashing the heck out of bad guys and anyone who doesn't appreciate dogs. And I saw Anne, poor invisible little Anne who'd like to do nothing more than build a forcefield around herself and sit in the middle making breakfast for the others.

A silly image. But not as silly as the idea of Five Go Down to Mordor. Another link I found was to Charlotte's Library. According to Charlotte's blog stats, someone found her website by searching for "The Hobbit by Enid Blyton" (go figure) and she immediately imagined a situation with a wizard banging noisily on the door of Kirrin Cottage and Uncle Quentin getting upset. In my reply to that post, I imagined the Five in a Lord of the Rings setting:

   "Preciousssssss," the gollum said, batting his eyelids at Timmy as Julian, Dick, Anne and George dismounted from the ent at Ent Station.
   "Grrr," said Timmy, his tail down.
   "I say, old chap," said Julian in surprise. "Don't be that way. Just because the gollum is of lower class stock doesn't make him bad. We have to treat everyone equally, you know. Hey, Dick, go and tell that porter to bring our bags over here at the double."
   "Well, I simply don't trust him," said George sullenly, staring defiantly at the gollum.
   "I think he's rather sweet," said Anne.
   "Preciousssssss," said the gollum, sidling up to her...

I think Five Go To Smuggler's Top might work in a Lord of the Rings setting, with Castaway Hill rising above the steaming lava... But I can't quite work out if the Sauron character would be Lenoir or Barling.

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