Malory Towers: In the Fifth: Book 5

I have been reading the Malory Towers books to my nine year old daughter, and we are both enjoying the series so much! My daughter loves to hear the stories of the characters, their friendships, life at boarding school and the pranks that the girls play! Although my daughter is a competent reader herself, I think these books are at a higher reading age, perhaps 11 up. So I find it easier to read them to my daughter at the moment. The other reason for that is that there are some very old fashioned and out dated words and views in the books. Sometimes I miss out certain words or sentences completely, if they are inappropriate today. For example, attractive and wealthy people are favoured. So I would swap the word ‘pretty’ for ‘kind’ to set a better example! Some girls in the stories have quick tempers and will slap or lash out at another girl. Even the main character, Darrell, can be violent, and she is popular and has roles such as head of form and head girl!So for my nine year old, I occasionally have to skip bits or, where I can’t do that because it would affect the story line, I’d have to stop and discuss it with my daughter so she understands that’s a very old fashioned attitude and why it’s inappropriate today.That doesn’t happen too often though, and there are also many, many examples of fairness and respect as well.Malory Towers definitely provides good talking points about friendships and behaviour, nicely timed for my nine year old who is starting to experience conflicts among her own peers at school!Malory Towers is now my daughters favourite ever series of books! We will both be really sad when we have finished all of the books!! I’m sure she will read it all again herself when she is older. By then she will recognise the outdated bits herself and will realise that some of the words and actions portrayed are typical of that era and are different today.

I love Malory Towers because it sounds very exciting every day. I like the setting especially the swimming pool in the rockpools. my favourite characters are Alisha and Sally.

Best book and possibly my favourite in the series. Read it tonnes of times. Anyone griping about it is completely misguided, although entitled to their own opinion, as it is a lot milder than what really happened (and happens) in boarding schools.

I love Enid Blyton and bought this as part of the full collection as enjoy these series greatly. Read repeatedly and loved every time.

Bought on request of 9 year old granddaughter who loves the whole collection, finding them both fun and intriguing at the same time.