today is sunday and i've just spent nearly all of it, as well as most of yesterday, munching on dried apricots and reading books in the five find-outers series. i swiped eight of them from su-lin when i was over on friday. enjoying them more than i remember - i can't have read any of these for, what, 15 years? i do think they're some of enid blyton's better detective stories. the secret seven were a little bland and unenterprising and anyway seven is rather an unwieldy size for a detecting group, you don't think? famous fives i didn't like - those had more to do with chance stumblings and physical discovery (i don't like camping, outdoorsy children) than the inspired workings of poirot-style little grey cells. oh and of course, the X of adventure series - i did like those although i'm sure it was for the exotic locales rather than for the mysteries. that's the series with jack and lucy ann and philip and dinah and kiki the parrot, no? the five find-outers (and dog) series had on the other hand - the shape - and the logic - methodical if however rudimentary - of the adult detective novel, plus the endless description of macaroons and chocolate sponge and ice-cream consumed. true, the children are a little two-dimensional: larry and daisy are amiable but non-descript, pip untidy and impatient, and she obviously likes sweet little bets best - innocent, well-meaning and sensitive - and fatty is all of what su-lin disapproved of in will beech - far too talent at too many things without trying - although that much is based on blyton's own life, i think, and fortunately he's meant to be far more to type than will.

i don't think i quite enjoyed the american stories as much as a child - trixie beldon and nancy drew and the hardy boys - well maybe i liked trixie beldon - though i think blyton's detecting children are much more funny. the only american child detectives that i liked, though on reflection it must be because their get-up resembled the blyton children, were the three investigators. pete and bob and jupiter jones - we investigate anything with three question marks to boot? mm hmm. though even then more sensational and focussed than the blytons which into their thin volumes still managed to pour daily life - sibling scruffles, parental interference, household chores, village events. holidays arrive, school reports come, and flu descends. a madcap scottie terrier and his comic adversary the village policeman. please also note the cream buns and eclairs on every other page. american children's lit, on the whole, disregard the food details and bulldoze on with the story. excepting laura.

why, incidentally, are so many children's books detective stories? and is that why we read sayers and christies now? (like how, even my favourite discworld books are the watch books) the child's need to know, i suppose, and all that bung about the unknowable X, needing to interpret the unknown world, etc etc? (though, no, i read sayers for peter wimsey. the mystery is rather by the way. i suppose that's precisely the difference i mean. the mystery can unfold alongside; she'll take the time to tell you which wine peter chose for lunch anyhow) probably also much to do with precocity and fulfillment and outdoing adults and the stuff mr purvis does so go on about. uhuh. i've half a mind to go out to sengkang library and see if i can get the other five findouter books. i want the first one, when they meet inspector jenks. and some malory towers and st clare's while i'm at it. i do like boarding school fiction.