Have you read the magic tree by Enid Blyton?

Just found this site today, hi to all and enjoy your books. :)

Hi :)

I have read the Enchanted Wood, Folk of The Magic Faraway Tree, The Folk of The Faraway Tree and many other Blyton books as a child and to this day I still love them. I truly wish the 3 I mentioned would be turned into movies like the Harry Potter series. They would make excellent watching in my humble opinion.

Oh i so want a copy of these nooks in Spanish so I can read them to my son. Could you share the ISBN, I am having trouble getting FNAC to accept they exist.

Thanks.

M.

I remember being given Chimney Corner Stories as a little kid for my birthday. I really liked Noddy - particularly the engrossing illustrations, and one of my teachers used to read us tales from the Magic Faraway Tree.

I also had the distrubingly titled "Mr Pink Whistle Interferes", which I enjoyed, and Amelia Jane Again.

I wasn't aware of the very middle class, racist, imperialist attitudes and the gender bias that existed in her work. Quite a few of her works have been altered to reflect modern attitudes rather than the attitudes of the 1930s. I'm not sure how critical you can be of her for this, though even as a kid I was aware of her preoccupation with money, which I found a bit odd even then.

In recent years she has been criticised for her lack of affection for her daughter, which was described in a biography. It was far from the idyllic and warm environment you would expect. My wife read it and was somewhat surprised by this lack of familial love.

Her grand daughter was interviewed for the Guardian below.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandst...phie-smallwood

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Originally Posted by Duna

:yawnb: I think Enid Blyton was a great writter :yawnb:

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I don't think she was a great writer but she was a great storyteller. So many children have come to an enjoyment of reading through her.For that she deserves praise.

I read all of the Famous Five books too, but never got into the Secret Seven. I knew she was disapproved of, but I didn't care. The educational authorities disapproved of anything good. Indeed, they disapproved of children having fun of any kind. We were more or less banned from reading Biggles.

As a child I used to read more Enid Blyton than anything else, and had no idea she was racist or imperialist or anything. Parents and teachers totally approved of her brand of middle class morality, and felt the books 'improved our English'. I daresay they were right about that. My son liked Noddy when he was small, but wasn't interested in anything else by her, and I noticed that a certain politically incorrect toy was changed to some other toy, which puzzled me at first.

I liked the Magic Faraway Tree stories a lot.

As I said, as a kid I didn't pick up the racist elenents in her work. Why would I have? I never equated golliwogs with a racist stereotype. There's no denying that it is one though, and it is the job of the parents and authorities to address this. I didn't pick it up as a kid and my kids won't have, but I wouldn't want to give them something that does promote a racial stereotype. I tbink it was a simple enough job to change the characters without losing the story. If it were an adult book, then I would expect adults to be able to discern an outmoded racist view from current attitudes. Kids are different though.