Previous letters pages can be found here.

Letters page from Volume 5, issue 3.

OUR

LETTER PAGE

Today our three letters are not from children in Britain, but from different places overseas. They are all very good, and as I could not decide which one should have the letter-prize, I put them into a box and asked someone to draw one out. She drew out the one from Switzerland. Here it is –

A letter from Jacqueline Rubeli, Zurich, Switzerland.
Dear Enid Blyton,
Our Granny in England sends us your magazine regularly and my brother and I thought you might like to know what the Zurich children are doing for the Hungarian refugees. Our school has been knitting squares for blankets (48 squares crocheted together make a big blanket) and even the boys asked to be taught to knit so that they could help. We have also set up stalls in the street, and sold anything from Xmas cards to hot roasted chestnuts and hot sausages. The students ran a special train – charging higher fares for the refugee fund. All these little things are a help, aren’t they?
Yours sincerely,
Jacqueline Rubeli.

(I’m glad you share our magazine, Jacqueline-and delighted to have your letter – which this week wins my prize.)

A letter from Vaughan and Bernard Hayward, Vaalvlei, Cape Province, S. Africa.
Dear Enid Blyton,
I am so glad that we are able to send you £5 for your Children’s Home. It is rather difficult to raise money on a farm. At last we decided to have a rummage sale. We made a big poster to advertise it. We marked all the articles, and Daddy prepared a place on the lawn for us to have our Sale. We could hardly wait for four o’clock ! We were so excited when we saw the wives and children of the farm employees coming to our sale. We sold. every single article and made £9 10s. 9d. of which we are sending you £5, the rest we send to another home in S. Africa.
Love from
Vaughan and Bernard Hayward.

(I did have a fine surprise when I read your letter, boys! Your sale was remarkably successful, and I don’t wonder you felt excited. Thank you very much.)

A letter from Connie Johnson, Sydney, Australia.
Dear Enid Blyton,
I want to tell you about our cat, Mrs. Tweedles. She has had fifty- three kittens, all of them black and white, like herself. Usually she has them in her basket, but this time she had them in such a funny place. Guess where it was! We hunted and hunted for them, and then we saw her climbing the old tree outside our fence. And when Daddy went to see why she was up there, he found five little black kittens in a hole there, where a bird had once nested! Then Daddy was funny and said “Dear Mrs. Tweedles, what do I see, five I little Tweedles, up in a tree!” thought you would like to hear about this.
Much love from
Connie Johnson.

(You wrote your letter beautifully, Connie, and I DID like reading it!)

Blyton often features letters from overseas, unsurprising as she was famously, well, famous, around the world, as proven with these three letters all from different continents. It’s still unusual to see letters from boys but there is one this week. (And even boys were knitting? Whatever next!)

Even so, the topics are common ones – fundraising and pets!

I’m intrigued by the running of a special train by students and charging more for it. I really can’t picture what that means? Perhaps students acting as the conductors on a certain service and taking additional donations on top of the fares?

I was very glad to read further down the letter that Mrs Tweedles did not have 53 kittens at once. Though that would have been something worth writing a letter about. It seems like Mrs Tweedles got confused and thought she was a bird and not a cat?