Five on a Treasure Island

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Five on a Treasure Island
Original 3rd edition cover of the first book in the series Five on a Treasure Island
Author	Enid Blyton
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	The Famous Five series
Genre(s)	Mystery, Adventure novel
Publisher	Hodder & Stoughton
Publication date	September]], 1942
Media type	Print (hardcover and paperback)
ISBN	NA
Followed by	Five Go Adventuring Again(1943)

Five on a Treasure Island (published in 1942) is a popular children's book by Enid Blyton. It is the first book in The Famous Five series. The first edition of the book was illustrated by Eileen Soper.

[edit] Plot Summary

Twelve year old Julian, his eleven year old brother Dick and ten year old sister Anne are chatting with their parents around the breakfast table. The subject of discussion is the family's summer holiday plans. The three children usually accompany their parents to the resort of Polseath, but this year will be different as their parents intend to travel alone to Scotland instead. It is decided that the three children will take their first holiday alone and stay with their Aunt Fanny and Uncle Quentin in the seaside town of Kirrin. The children are excited about the holiday, particularly as they will meet their cousin Georgina for the first time. Georgina, they are told, is the same age as Dick, and an only child.

The children are driven down to Kirrin where they meet their kindly Aunt Fanny and her short-tempered scientist husband, Quentin. Uncle Quentin is a very clever scientist, who spends most of his time holed up in his study working on his experiments. We learn that, unfortunately, despite his brilliance, Quentin does not earn enough money to keep his family properly. For example, Georgina does not attend boarding school like her cousins, and the household does not have a hired cook or domestic staff.

Georgina turns out to be rather different from the demure little girl her cousins were expecting. The eleven year old girl wants to be a boy, cuts her hair short, wears boy's clothing and refuses to answer to her given name of Georgina, instructing her cousins to call her George instead. She is very reluctant to be friendly with her three cousins and does not make them feel welcome in her home. Julian explains that he and the two others are willing to be friendly, but they will not beg George to be their friend. He goes on to say that, in fact, the three cousins might not even want to be friends with George anyway. George starts to warm to her cousins after this is made clear to her.

George, it turns out, is keeping a dog in secret from her father, who has forbidden her to have one. The dog, a large mongrel named Timothy, is being kept by a local fisherman, for which she pays all her pocket money. Julian, Dick and Anne make friends with Timothy and buy the penniless George an ice-cream. They agree to keep Timothy a secret. George promises to take them to visit the little island in the bay, which she claims is hers, a gift from her mother who owned the land.

The children row over to the island - George is an expert rower, as good as a boy and in fact better than the local fishermen - and visit the wreck of a ship that lies on the bottom of the sea, just below the rocks. The ship was carrying gold, George explains, but it was never found even though divers explored it many times. That very night, there is a huge storm and the wreck is lifted from its resting place on the sea bed and carried onto the rocks. The children are very excited and decide to row out to the wreck and explore it, thinking that they might be able to find the gold missed by the divers.

The children do not find any gold, but they do find a wooden box lined with tin. Uncle Quentin confiscates the box from the children and puts it in his study. The children are very upset, and Julian sneaks into the study to borrow the box for a while, so the children can examine it. The box turns out to contain an old map, which the children guess (correctly) is of Kirrin Island and the dungeons that lie below the ruined castle. In one of the rooms, the map shows something called "ingots", which the children realise means gold bars.

The children learn that Uncle Quentin, worried about his family's difficult financial situation, is about to sell Kirrin Island to some men. Quentin is reluctant but he feels that he cannot refuse their offer. The island's buyers, however, are the bad men who the children see earlier trespassing on the island. It is clear that they want to buy it to guarantee themselves access to the hidden gold.

Desperate to save the day, find the gold and save the island, the children head out to the island to try to find the gold ingots. They climb down an old well to reach the dungeons, and find the gold. In a fit of anger, George smashes up the boat belonging to the intruders, ensuring that they are trapped on the island for the police to find.

George's family suddenly become very rich, and do not have to sell the island after all. George is able to belong to the same social class as her cousins, and attend the same boarding school as Anne.