Having recorded the results of people’s favourite Enid Blyton book or series for about a week, I now have 1,278 results and figured that was enough to be going on with! We are still getting a lot of requests so Facebook’s promotion must still be running – it just takes up too much time to record every answer before approving the requests.

This is in no way definitive – it’s just a bit of fun. Obviously the only people to answer the favourites question were the people who chose to join my Facebook group, and   Facebook chose certain demographics to suggest my group to. It seems to be women aged between thirty and seventy – though of course other people requested to join independently during that time.

So if you’d like to know the most popular book and/or series chosen by those specific demographics – read on! (If you joined the group recently and don’t see your answer it means you joined either before or after I was recording the results, or your request was approved by one of the other moderators.)

I thought long and hard (probably longer and harder than needed) about how to present the data and in the end decided it would be easiest to combine votes for individual books from a series as a vote for the series as a whole – though I’ll give a breakdown in some cases.

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The Honourable Mentions

With such a huge catalogue to choose from it’s not surprising that many titles were never mentioned at all – and some just once or twice.

Here are the titles which did get voted for but just once each:

Bedtime Stories, Binkle and Flip, Birds of Our Garden, The Book of Naughty Children, The Caravan Family, Children at Green Meadows, Chimney Corner Stories, The Christmas Book, Come to the Circus, Feefo, Tuppenny and Jinks, Goodnight Story Book, Happy Hours Story Book, Holiday House, The Mystery That Never Was, Rubbalong Tales, Tales After Tea, Tales From Toyland.

And the ones which got more than one, but less than ten:

The Treasure Hunters (2)
Those Dreadful Children, Bimbo and Topsy, The Book of Fairies (3)
Adventures of Pip (the Pixie), The Book of Brownies (4)
The Land of Far Beyond, Mr Galliano’s Circus, Mr Meddle, Shadow the Sheepdog, The Six Cousins (5)
Three Golliwogs, Brer Rabbit (7)
Adventurous Four, Mr Pink Whistle, Mr Twiddle (9)

I know some of you will be furiously wondering how a book or books that you absolutely love got so few votes. It’s surprising to me, too. But then I remember that I’d not have voted for any of these even as in my top ten even though I do like them. That’s the problem with Blyton, when you’ve got hundreds of excellent books to choose from, something has to come way way down at the bottom of the list!

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Club 11-50

Not quite the same ring as 18-30, but these are the books that got more than the ones above, but less than the ones I’ll list next!

Amelia Jane (11)
Cherry Tree/Willow Farm, Naughtiest Girl (13)
The Barney/R Mysteries (15)
The Secret Series (16)
The Wishing Chair (24)
Noddy (34)

A couple of interesting things here.

There were votes for four of the individual Barney Mysteries –
Rockingdown – 2
Ring O Bells – 2
Rubadub – 3
Rat-a-Tat – 1

Not surprising that Ragamuffin (usually considered the weakest book in the series) got no votes, but Rat-a-Tat, (usually considered the second weakest) got a vote while Rilloby Fair got none! In general it’s a shame that the Barney Mysteries are not more popular, as they are good books, but I can’t complain too much as they are not my favourite.

The Secret Series is another one that surely should have had way more votes. What’s interesting here is that nobody voted for the series itself, only individual books.

Not surprisingly Island was the most popular with 13 votes, while Spiggy Holes got 2 and Moon Castle (!?) got 1.

Despite getting 34 votes nobody voted for an individual Noddy title.

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The top 7

I don’t think that anyone will be surprised about what is in the top 7 – her most popular series.

In seventh place we have The Five Find-Outers (and dog) – though many people confused me by referring to it as The Mystery Series!

The FFOs got 54 votes, with 45 for the series, 3 for Pantomime Cat, 2 for Missing Man and one each for Burnt Cottage, Disappearing Cat, Hidden House and Invisible Thief.

In sixth place is The Adventure Series (I’m offended, this should be in at second place, surely??) with 55 votes.

There were only 27 votes for the series, but Castle, Island and Valley all got 8 votes each, Sea 3 and River (!?) 1. The absolute scandal that Circus – clearly the best one of all – got no votes!

In fifth place was St Clare’s with 69 votes. 61 of those were for the series, while The Twins (book 1) got 5, Claudine got 2 and Second Form got 1.

In fourth place was The Secret Seven with 82 votes. Given that the first book is also called The Secret Seven it was hard to be completely sure that people were voting for the series and not the book, but most wrote Secret Seven, and many voted for ‘Famous Five, Secret Seven…’ etc, so it was most likely the series. Nobody voted for any other individual Secret Seven books anyway!

In third place is the Faraway Tree/Enchanted Wood series. As two of the books are titled similarly to the series, it was again tricky to work out if people were referring to one of the books or the series. If they listed ‘Faraway Tree, Famous Five…’ etc it was obvious, but otherwise, unless they put ‘series’ in the answer I put it down as the book.

Anyway, the best of my figuring meant I counted the votes as 59 for the series (with far more people referring to it as Faraway/Magic Faraway Tree as opposed to Enchanted Wood), 91 for The Magic Faraway Tree, 7 For The Enchanted Wood, 6 for Folk of the Faraway Tree and 2 for Up the Faraway Tree. That means that The Magic Faraway Tree was the most-voted for single title – but as above, I’ve no idea how accurate my count was when it came to book vs series.

In second place (drum roll, please!) we have… Malory Towers! This has always been a popular series so, and generally considered better written than the experimental St Clare’s so it’s not surprising to see it get so many votes.

Malory Towers as a series got 181 votes, with only three of the books (First Term, Third Year and Upper Fourth) getting 1 vote each.

We all know what that means! There’s only one series left, and that is… The Famous Five! 

Despite the quite frequent conversations I see in the Blyton community that go along the lines of ‘I don’t see why the Famous Five is so popular, the FFO/Adventure Series/etc is much better written’ the Famous Five have come out on top with a whopping 441 votes.

The breakdown for the individual books was:
Five Go to Smuggler’s Top (19 – making it the second-most popular title overall)
Five On a Treasure Island (15)
Five Go Off to Camp (8)
Five On Kirrin Island Again (6)
Five Run Away Together (5)
Five Go Off In a Caravan (3)
Five Go Adventuring Again, Five Go to Mystery Moor (2)
Five Go to Billycock Hill, Five Go Down to the Sea, Five Go to Demon’s Rocks, Five On a Hike Together, Five on Finniston Farm (1)

No votes for the final two books (not surprising) but also none for Get Into Trouble, Fall Into Adventure, Have a Wonderful Time, Plenty of Fun, Secret Trail, or Get Into a Fix, several of which come in the middle of the series and are usually regarded as strong titles.

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When Brodie saw what I was doing he wanted to vote too.

Smugglers Top, the one we just finished [Mystery to Solve] , the first one, no I like all the Famous Five books!

I’d have voted similarly to him, further cementing the Five’s huge lead.

What about you?