I can hardly believe it but we are into the second month of 2014 already! We celebrated that fact with a lovely Blyton poem yesterday though.
This week I am hoping to finish my review of the Famous Five Annual, we will be posting another chapter of Poppy’s Adventure Series fanfic and Stef is planning to tell us all about her latest (and very wet) visit to Bourne End.
We haven’t done ‘blog news’ for a while, except to say we’d beaten our record for visits in a day when we published our interview with Jemima Rooper, so here’s where we stand now.
We have now had over 45,500 views and more than 700 comments. I’m amazed every time I look at the figures!
Browsing twitter on Saturday night I found this brilliant article about a library in New Jersey getting its first stock of Blyton books. I hope the children of Edison enjoy them!
I’ve hardly taken any pictures in the last fortnight as the weather has been truly awful. I’ve added a few, some from my mum’s birthday party and a couple I took on my phone in the brief times it wasn’t raining when I was out.
Fiona
pippastef
worldofblyton
World of Blyton 
Thanks for noticing our recent donation of Enid Blyton books to Edison Public Library in New Jersey! I’m the President of Friends of the Edison Public Library, and we raise funds for, and awareness of our town’s library system. I also happen to be English, and was brought up on Blyton myself, so I was really chuffed to hear that kids (and parents) in Edison had been asking for these books – a lot! There’s quite a large Indian population in town, and like we Brits, the adults remembered the books fondly. Librarians there had been trying through the usual library sources to get them for 2 years! Finally, they came to us to ask if we could help. With the help of my Wife, who enjoys Internet sleuthing, we found sets on EBay, and Amazon.com, which we bought and presented to the Library.
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Thanks for the link, Fiona – fascinating! Some of the best series there – could still do with the iconic ‘Adventure’ series, ‘The Malory Towers’ series, ‘The Barney Mysteries’ etc etc
Francis
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Actually, the photos show the first delivery. We delivered another 2 series last week! They definitely have the Malory Towers series, Naughtiest Girl, Classic Mystery Stories, Secret Seven, St. Clare’s and Famous Five. 82 books in total.
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I’m so very pleased (and surprised) that finally some kids in NJ are showing interest in EB books.
I wish we could get our older grandson (10 years old) interested in the first Famous Five vol., but he still hasn’t touched it 14 months later. We gave him a lovely old 50’s copy with Soper’s illustrations and the dust wrapper. But all he reads is “Harry Potter” and books on spies…blah.
The poor boy doesn’t realize what he’s missing. I told him that the FF books are often about spies, but even that couldn’t wake up his interest.
BTW who actually got the NJ kids interested in Blyton? Was one of the moms from the UK originally?
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@chrissie777 – I wasn’t aware of this, but apparently Blyton was/is huge in India (makes sense with the British influence there). We have a large Indian population in our town, especially at one end of town. I believe the parents fondly remember EB books and want their own kids to enjoy them too.
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Hi Graham,
I got confused and thought you sent books to the Edison library in New Jersey, USA.
Thanks for letting me know it was actually in India.
I live close to NJ, in Massachussetts (MA).
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Both Graham’s group and the library in question are in Edison, New Jersey Chrissie. What he said was there are a large number of people from India in Edison.
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Thank you for clarifying that, @fiona!
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Thanks, Fiona and Graham, now I get you. I hardly ever see Indian people here in New England. There were a lot in Uxbridge near London when we lived there.
Hopefully the American born kids will discover the Blyton books as well when they’ll check out the library. Our grandson loved castles and the Tower of London when we lived in the UK, so I was disappointed that he never gave FOATI a chance. EB’s books are so different (dare I say much more interesting?) from the usual US children’s books. Just imagine how much more EB books could be sold in the US…
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