As with last year I got spoiled on my birthday and at Christmas and managed to amass a pile of Blyton-themed gifts. Most of these will end up having blogs of their own as I read/listen and review them later but for now here’s a quick look at what I got.

1

2

3

6

I’ve only noticed lately that to get the cover illustration to fit, they’ve used a mirror image of the right hand edge to add extra width on each CD.

8

1. The Famous Five Story Collection on CD

2. Pea’s Book of Holidays by Susie Day

3. Five Fall Into Adventure & Five Get Into Trouble on CD

4. The Famous Five Annual 2015

5. Enid Blyton’s Christmas Stories

6. So You Think You Know the Famous Five? by Clive Gifford

7. Five Have a Mystery to Solve & Five Go Down to the Sea on CD

8. The Amelia Jane Bumper Book

I asked for all of these things with the exception of the Christmas Story collection which my Mum spotted and asked if I’d like. I’m looking forward to having a proper read or listen to all of these but I suspect I will try and spread them out so I can use them for the blog as well.

The Amelia Jane book should be particularly interesting as there’s really nothing online about what it contains or how it came about.

There was some confusion on Christmas day though, as I opened the first of the CDs from my parents. My sister looked terribly worried and pretty much let on that she’d bought me a CD and worried it was the same one. I then opened another CD from my partner (who had been equally but more quietly worried.) The Story Collection and the Mystery to Solve/Down to the Sea covers are reasonably similar and have a blueish band across the top so I can understand the worry, and then I opened my sister’s CD which has the red band across the top and a non-sea background. She was relieved.

You might be wondering about number two, and how that is connected to Blyton, but it does have reason to be there.

Pea can’t wait for the summer holidays to start! Clover’s spending the summer at Theatre Camp, Mum’s staying home to write – and Pea and Tink are heading off on an Enid Blytonish camping trip.

There was one last Blyton gift I got, but as it wasn’t a book or CD I thought I should have it separately here.

Yes, those are earring books. Or book earrings. They even have (blank) pages. I should have taken a picture of the back as they have the full dustjacket reproduced in miniature.

I hope you all got what you wanted for Christmas, Blyton goodies included of course.