This is part 10 of 12, I said last week there were 5 stories to go but I think it was actually 6 – 5 I have and 1 I don’t.

Previous parts look at story 1, stories 2 and 3, stories 4 and 5, stories 6 and 7, stories 8 to 10,  stories 11 to 13, stories 14 to 16, stories 17 to 18 and stories 19 to 20.

Shut the Gate!

This one is from Sunny Stories #424 from 1948, and first reprinted in The Eleventh Holiday Book. There is another story coming up called Please Shut the Gate, but this appears to be a different story and not a renaming. As with the story above it was not reprinted again during Blyton’s life, but has had four other printings since 1970.

A brief review

The story begins with Pat and Biddy getting shouted at by a farmer for not shutting one of his gates. Although the children claim to love animals they really are rather stupid about thinking closing gate’s doesn’t really matter.

Back on their uncle’s farm it’s revealed that although they are not naughty children they are forever leaving doors and gates open and leaving their bedroom in a terrible mess. (Makes me wonder why how the children can be so unconcerned about open gates when clearly they’ve been told over and over already).

It all comes to a head when their carelessness means Bray – the donkey they adore so much – gets into the farmhouse garden and causes carnage. Uncle tells them he is going to sell Bray and that’s the final push that makes the children feel tremendous guilt and teaches them a lesson.

I assume it’s the summer holidays but this is another not that summery story.

The updates

This is quite a long story, so I expected there to be more changes than there actually were.

First up – the title has lost its exclamation mark.

The children no longer call the farmer sir, and tramp is changed to walker.

Originally Biddy is to sew a button back onto her shoe and this is changed to jacket. That then necessitates another change from leather to thick material.

Other than those the only changes are the removal of hyphens from card-game, to-morrow, to-day and tea-time, and the removal of italics from two words (with eight other uses of italics being left.)

What’s more interesting is what they didn’t change. The names are the same – and how many children today would have heard the name Biddy? They might have heard old biddy as in an unpleasant old woman, though!

There is also a lot of hitting of Bray the donkey. Now this is important to the story – this and the threat of him being sold is what really drives it home to the children that their actions have consequences. Yet most references to spankings, canings, any sort of physical violence towards people or animals has been taken out of other reprinted stories – usually replaced with yelling, scolding or occasionally shaking.

First Uncle Ben recalls that Bray has had a lot of beatings for past bad behaviour. When he gets into the garden there were three men hitting him with sticks, he gets such a whack with a stick, and Biff! Uncle Ben hit him again. Afterwards Uncle Ben is quite satisfied, remarking Well, he’s had a good thrashing, anyhow!

I’m not advocating for changing these things – I’m just highlighting the total lack of consistency of the editing process.

The illustrations

Sunny stories had illustrations by Joyce A. Johnson while Galbraith O’Leary provides 9 illustrations for the reprint in the Eleventh Holiday Book. The three chosen colours are certainly striking, but the red makes the farmer look quite terrifying. I know he’s angry about the gate but that’s just not a natural skin tone!

Look Out for the Elephant!

First published in Sunny Stories #465 in 1949 – the only reprint during Blyton’s life was in The Tenth Holiday Book. It has five further prints from 1971 on, including two books titled Look Out for the Elephant and Other Stories – though both are identical in terms of content.

A brief review

This is one of the shorter stories in the collection. Sara gets to school and hears that there is an elephant loose in the park. Men with sticks have been sent for (is there a brigade of men-with-sticks, ready to be called for such an emergency?) but Sara doesn’t like the idea. She is very worries abut the flowers in the park and so heads off with a load of buns to tempt the elephant safely from the park.

Honestly this one’s a bit weird. Everyone’s main focus is on the flowers. It’s why Sara goes to lure the elephant along – she doesn’t want him to trample the flowers. Even the elephant’s keeper (who has been waiting at the gates for some reason, instead of collecting his own elephant?) says he was worried about Old Jumbo trampling the flowers.

Nobody was worried that the elephant might hurt himself? Hurt someone, or their pets while on a rampage? Cause damage to something more expensive and harder to replace than flowers?

It’s also not a massively obvious summer story other than the fact there are flowers in the flower beds indicating it’s somewhere between spring and autumn.

The updates

Very few. I’m surprised this story is even in, given the changes in attitudes to circus animals. A donkey ride was cut from an earlier story but Sara rides the elephant at the end of this tale.

Sara’s curly head becomes just her head.

The only substantial change is to where the buns came from. Originally She turned and ran into the school. She went to where the eleven o’clock buns and milk were set ready for the children, and she put twelve of the buns into her school satchel! This has become She turned and ran over to the baker’s. She bought twelve buns out of her pocket money and put them into her school satchel.

You don’t get eleven o’clock milk and buns these days (more’s the pity) but you also don’t see elephants in circuses or giving rides in zoos, either. Perhaps the editors thought taking the school buns was too close to theft – but then leaving school without telling a teacher is not allowed these days either.

The only other change is the removal of the hyphen from park-gates. All the italics were left this time.

The illustrations

Sylvia I Venus provided illustrations for the Sunny Stories version, while Mary Brooks did four for the Tenth Holiday Book.