Posted by RichardG on January 14, 2008 at 18:41:26 from 77.68.112.138 user RichardG.
In Reply to: AR vs Blyton posted by Pam Adams on January 11, 2008 at 17:11:11:
I started reading the Famous Five at the age of six or seven (they were the first non-illustrated books I read). I think I came to read S&A at around the age of ten or eleven. I think that age gap is about right for the two authors. I might add that I was able to strongly identify with the Famous Five at the age I read them, just as I could with the Swallows & Amazons when I came to them.
The lack of a doggy character in AR was a minus though - my boxer (who would have been named Timothy if he had looked anything like the pictures in the Blyton books, as reading them was what made me persuade my parents to let me have a dog) used to want to come out in the dinghies with us, and would run round the lakeshore trying to keep up if he was not allowed to do so. There was one wonderful occasion when he tried to swop boats in mid-lake, and having got his forrard legs into one boat, pushed with his aft legs to complete the manoeuvre and succeeded only in pushing the boats apart - cue a very wet and disgruntled dog and the crews of both boats rolling around laughing. Fortunately for him we were not very far from the shore.