Happy New Year to all my readers! I hope everyone had a good festive period and the return to work hasn’t been too arduous. (Assuming you were off, that is. I remember working Christmas in retail only too well…)
I hadn’t really planned to take a blogging break over Christmas – I had in fact been intending to finish the Christmas stories series before the New Year. But there were jigsaws to do, and Lego to build… so I ended up taking rather a long break. You’ll have to put up with a tiny bit more Christmas content now, just so I can get that series complete.
December round up
and
Enid Blyton’s Christmas Stories then and now, part 9
I rarely use this heading, and when I have it has been to answer a question that has come in from a reader.
This week the question is – what do I have planned for the blog this year?
As usual, the answer is that I don’t really know!
But I have a few ideas for some content, such as:
- Watching and reviewing the new Famous Five TV episode (and the other two which I think come out this year) and series 3 and 4 of Malory Towers.
- Putting together Brodie’s comments and questions on the Famous Five books
- Finally reading and reviewing books on my shelves like Andrew Maunder’s Literary Life, the Malory Towers TV novel, and Sheila Ray’s Blyton Phenomenon,
- Something about Enid Blyton Jigsaws
- Reviewing the Naughtiest Girl books and the Secret Series (maybe Malory Towers and St Clares)
Some of these have been on my list of ideas for a very long time, though!
What would you like to see me write? Let me know in the comments below.
Fiona
pippastef
worldofblyton
World of Blyton 
Please no more on Malory Towers (it’s quite boring in the EBS Journals). But I would love to find out more about Sheila Ray’s and Duncan McLaren’s books on EB.
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Sorry – Malory Towers is one of my favourites so there will be more of that. I’ve read Duncan McLaren’s book but not reviewed it so I’ll add that to my list!
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It’s very helpful if you can review books of this type.
If only we had the time to read everything! But if I have a free afternoon, I’d rather relax by reading an actual book by Enid, rather than one about her written by somebody else.
Your reviews are a usually reliable guide, as to whether a book about her is worth reading. I don’t fancy ruining an afternoon reading a book that you would give the thumbs-down, if I could be reading something enjoyable. So I’d much prefer to spend ten minutes reading a decent review here first, as a worthwhile way of filtering-out books that shouldn’t be touched with a barge-pole!
If you want a suggestion for something to blog about, new readers might be on the look out for advice as to which books by Blyton are suitable for which age-groups, and as to which are her best books in each of those categories. And maybe a warning of which volumes to avoid!
Nothing would be more off-putting to a reader new to Blyton than to try-out, say, the Five Find Outers and Dog, by picking up a copy of ‘The Mystery of Banshee Towers’!
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I do like Fiona’s Malory Towers reviews! I hadn’t previously looked at the Enid Blyton Society forums – there is a whole thread there, but it looks to be much more purist arguing about whether this or that change from the books is acceptable, whereas the reviews here are readable because they take the series on its own terms. I would say though that write-ups of Series 3 and 4 could be relatively compact – looking at the cast changes, plot arcs and character developments, rather than crawling over each episode in turn.
For something different, I don’t know if this is helpful but I’d be interested to know more about the Secret Seven series, perhaps in a more meta way why it always seems to be the poor relation of the Famous Five.
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I know that I am terrible for doing more summarising than reviewing, and at great length too. I always aim for a ‘proper’ review and yet end up bogged down by reiterating everything that happens in an episode (or book). I do have to go episode by episode though as by the time I’ve watched a whole series I’ll have forgotten what happened at the beginning.
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The Secret Seven is a poor relation to the teenager series, such as Famous Five and Five Find-outers (or Malory Towers), because it’s not aimed at teenagers!
Secret Seven is written for a much younger audience, hence is pretty much unreadable by anyone over the age of eight.
You can’t do an in-depth review, because the tales are too shallow, in terms of both plot and characterisation. There is some slight difference from nursery tales of Noddy and Big Ears fighting PC Plod, but not very much.
When I was a kid, you got given books for Christmas depending on whether they were Red Dragons (for the very young), or Blue Dragons (8 to 11 years) , or Green Dragons (for ages 11 and over). I might be slightly misremembering the ages for each, but you didn’t get Secret Seven Red Dragons (nuysery-level tales) from doting aunts or grandparents when you were a teenager.
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Thanks, that makes sense. I’d remembered them as being Famous Five with different characters, hadn’t realised there’s a big difference in levels.
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I like reading articles about the school stories but almost everything else too :-). Looking forward to Brodie’s comments about the FF!
I’m not at all into anything that has to do with fairy tales but it’s still interesting to read about it every now and then.
Also I’m interested in your reviews of TV adaptations. I’m one of the “purists” who don’t watch them because they stray much too much from the books but I still like to read the threads about them on the forums and your texts about them.
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Some fanfiction for this year maybe?
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There’s something half (or perhaps even three quarters) written right now, so that’s a distinct possibility.
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Hii I really enjoyed St Andrews and I am wondering if you are planning to write more ??
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We are writing something right now for Bill and Allie but hopefully more St Andrews stuff at some point. We are going to St Andrews this weekend so maybe inspiration will strike.
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