The Secret Seven Covers through the years part 2

Posted on September 17, 2025 by Fiona

Last time I got as far as 1987 which means we are heading into the 90s and the sort of covers which were around when I was a kid.

But first…

I missed this last time – the mystery of the Chivers edition. Secret Seven Mystery (an apt title here) has 16 editions. Every other book from #3 onwards has 15 – so where did an extra one creep in?

In 1986 when Chivers published this version, which is just the 1984 Knight edition with a different coloured background. I can only assume that this book was more popular than expected, and/or they didn’t print enough Knight copies, and someone else had to produce some. Still, a bit weird. Imagine buying this one and never being able to find matching copies of the rest of the series? Mind you, it is one of the ‘bad hallucination’ covers where a giant boy is spying a smaller version of himself, so maybe few children were desperate for more!

The Secret Seven, 90s style

There were four different versions published in the 90s, three of which you could probably describe as 90s style, and one which is both 90s and not 90s, and yes I’ll explain that enigma later.

First up was Hodder in 1990 with a series of uncredited covers. These are in a similar style to the 1991 Knight Famous Fives with the metallic title and 90s fashions.

An attempt is made (on some of them) to include action and movement. The text (probably worse on these small images) is a bit hard to read against the backgrounds, and the repetition of Secret Seven makes the titles sound silly – ie Secret Seven Go Ahead Secret Seven… or the best/worst one – Secret Seven the Secret Seven. (This is a problem on several others sets, but some are worse than others.)

Then between 1991 and 1993 Award produced a set of books – I’m pretty sure these were hardbacks – with covers first by AWP (books 1&2) and the rest by Dorothy Hamilton. These aren’t too bad and actually look to me as if they could be older than the 90s. Apart from a few which have modern clothing the others are fairly timeless.

After that it’s back to Hodder in 1993 for another set. If the art style looks familiar, that’s because David Barnett also illustrated the 1995 Hodder Famous Fives. Lots of brightly-coloured 90s clothes here, though at least the children and scenery are realistic.

I’m having deja vu here!

And now for the 90s-but-not-90s, which are 1996 Hodders and which feature the original artwork. They are not the original covers, though, they are the 9o0s version which means cutting the original down to a square and adding banners top and bottom for the title etc. Again this style is familiar and has been used on the Famous Five.

As the first ten books had a large title banner at the top it means the illustration isn’t cropped too much – though the last five start to look a bit squashed and the final book has a horse with a missing ear.

I actually don’t mind these as they at least retain most of the original, era-appropriate covers.

Next time: the Secret Seven hit the new millenium!

Posted in Illustrations and artwork | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Monday #677

Posted on September 15, 2025 by Fiona

Stef has returned home (boo), I’m back at work (ugh) it’s cold and rainy (sob).

On the plus side Stef and I watched an episode of the 90s Famous Five last week so I can bring you our thoughts on that soon.

Secret Seven covers through the years part 2

and

Peril on the Night Train

A few highlights of our conversation about the 90s episode.

Me to Stef: Do you know every single word? How many times have you watched these?

Me: UGLY PULLOVER ALERT

Also me: Who goes treasure hunting in a dungeon in a cream sweater??

 

 

 

 

Posted in Blog talk | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Monday #676

Posted on September 8, 2025 by Fiona

No (other) posts this week as Stef is visiting me. We have just watched Peril on the Night Train (the second episode of the new Famous Five series, not that it sounds like it) together though, so look out for a review coming soon.

Let’s have more than one to give you an idea of what you have to look forward to in our review.

Fiona: How is tea ready? Who made tea?

…

Stef: I’m still trying to reconcile a train

…

Stef: SMUGGLERS

…

Fiona: It doesn’t even WORK

…

Fiona: That would raise some eyebrows

Bet you can’t wait!

Posted in Blog talk | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Reading the Secret Island to Brodie

Posted on September 5, 2025 by Fiona

This one we read from October 26th to November 9th, 2024. I’m catching up, slightly! I had to double check my dates as two weeks seemed rather quick for The Secret Island, but they are correct. You can just make out the covers on my Bookmory calendar, showing the dates we read it.

Island life

Brodie was completely captivated by this book despite it not being the more typical Blyton adventure that he normally enjoys. The island is mentioned pretty early and from that moment he was desperate for them to just hurry up and run away there – though he did agree that it made sense for them to take a bit of time to pack!

He was really interested in all the little parts of their plans and nodded approvingly as they solved various problems (like putting the milk in the spring to keep it cool, which he had suggested himself). He also asked a lot of questions.

He was particularly preoccupied about the food situation – asking what they would do if they ran out of food, where they would get more from. Despite that he, too, was reticent about them eating the rabbits.

The picking of berries excited him as we regularly pick wild strawberries, raspberries and blackberries while out on walks. Often it’s hard to get Brodie to move on once he’s found a good patch of fruit!

We had quite a long conversation about mustard seed and how it becomes mustard, and why the children would bother with it.

He also worried about the winter coming, and the children getting cold and wet. That’s a very fair concern as I think they only have one (light) coat between them, and no boots or scarves or anything. Sleeping out of doors also concerned him because what if it rains? 

He thought they should have torches and proper tents. I had to explain (again) that although those things were around at the time not everyone could afford them. I think he has gotten used to the affluence of the Kirrins and the Mannering/Trents!

One thing he also asked was How can nobody else know about an island? That’s a good question – it is sort of unbelievable, and obviously not as true as Jack thought as the trippers find it.

Getting Daisy to the island astonished him – a COW, SWIMMING??

He loved willow house but I had to spend quite a bit of time looking up photos of willow houses to help him understand the building of it. I never found anything that quite matched what is desribed in the book (or at least my imagination’s picture of it).

To update or to not update

I feel as if I made less changes here than in some other books.

I left the slaps in as I think they have far more impact than scoldings alone. That’s not to say that the life they led minus the slaps, as in the modern editions, isn’t enough to run away from, but the violence adds another level. I think (for a short while at least) it made him grateful for his own life.

I did balance out the boys’ and girls’ roles where I could.

“Nora and Peggy ought to be going to school and wearing nice clothes that fit them, and having friends to tea,” said Mike to himself. “This is no life for them. They are just very hard-worked servants for Aunt Harriet, and she pays them nothing.”

Why isn’t Mike worthy of these things too? I changed the names and references from they and them to we and us.

 He wanted to go very badly—but would the two girls really be able to stand a wild life like that? No proper beds to sleep in—perhaps no proper food to eat—and suppose one of them was ill? Well, they would have to chance all that. They could always come back if things went too wrong.

Again, I included Mike and made this apply to the three children and not just the girls.

“You leave it to me,” said Jack. “I don’t like hurting things any more than you do. But  know quite well how to skin rabbits. It’s a man’s job, that, so you two girls can leave it to Mike and me. So long as you can cook the rabbits for dinner, that’s all you need worry about. 

I made this more about Jack knowing how to do it, so it was his job, not a man’s job, and Mike could learn if he wanted to.

Other than that I don’t think there was anything other than not using queer. The boys and girls jobs are somewhat stereotypical (Peggy mends and cooks, Nora looks after the chickens, the boys fish and catch rabbits and mend/build things) but it would have been a lot of work to alter that. Besides, it seems very much as if they are playing to their natural strengths. Nora doesn’t do mending or much cooking, and at no point are they told these are girls’ jobs.

A rollercoaster of a book

There are a number of tense scenes in the book, but they are balanced out by lots of moments of humour and fun. Brodie gets very tense and worried when things are going badly, and I’m sure nobody will be surprised at which scenes I highlight here.

  • The children sneaking off to run away after being told to stay in
  • The trippers visiting the island and intending to explore it
  • The policeman nearly catching Jack in the village and the children knowing that soon people will be searching for them (This, of course, reads very differently when you’ve read it before and know how it ends)
  • The searchers coming to the island and making it into the caves

At these tense moments he always asks me what happens next – especially if we end a chapter with a cliffhanger. For some reason he usually asks me if I have read the book before, and I have to say yes, but I won’t spoil things for him. Sometimes if he is upset I will tell him that things turn out OK in the end, but I won’t say how. Sometimes if he would just wait until I finish a paragraph he’d have his answer as well.

Things he laughed at included

  • Daisy scaring off the trippers, and frightening the searchers with her unexpected mooing.
  • The man who says he will eat his hat if the children are on the island, because of course they are on the island
  • The ‘boat’ that turned out to be a swan

As Jack finds Mr and Mrs Arnold and they reunite with the children he said:

It’s so happy. I’m so happy I could cry!

I know what he means. As an adult I think I almost – or sometimes even do – cry at this part of the book. I don’t think I ever did as a child, though.

Then he was super disappointed that they had to leave the island, and that the book had to end.

My reading experience

This was actually a pretty easy one to read. Very little in the way of changes needed. The worst ones are the things you forget about and you’re half-way through a sentence and have the only a second or two to find a substitute for the n-word or something while still reading aloud. Nothing in the way of accents required, and actually very few characters over-all. The boys probably sounded quite alike – though I tried to make Jack sound older and more authoritative, whilst the girls were similar but again I tried to make Peggy sound older and more confident.

I did have an additional thought/nitpick when the searchers were on the island and noticed the trampled area at the spring and possibly some footmarks. I wouldn’t have been surprised if there was a little worn footpath – like the desire lines you see where people take shortcuts across the grass – as the children would have been going back and forth to the spring multiple times a day, and probably taking the same route each time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Book reviews | Tagged , | 1 Comment

August 2025 round up

Posted on September 3, 2025 by Fiona

We are into September (and autumn) now so it’s time to look at what I got up to in August.

What I read

August was a bit of a slow month – only ten books read, but I’m still 13 ahead of my target so it’s fine. Ticked off a classic at least and two books read from the to-read list, but four borrowed from the library one of which was a BABAL*, so swings and roundabouts.

So I read:

  • Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
  • Insidious Intent (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #10) – Val McDermid
  • O is for Outlaw (Kinsey Millhone #15) – Sue Grafton
  • Cherry Ames, Senior Nurse (Cherry Ames #2) – Helen Wells
  • How the Dead Speak (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #110 – Val McDermid
  • A History of Britain in 21 Women – Jenni Murray
  • Kick Back (Kate Brannigan #2) – Val McDermid
  • P is for Peril (Kinsey Millhone #16) – Sue Grafton
  • Bikini – Amber Eve
  • Love at First Book – Jenn McKinlay

I ended the month still working through:

  • Mr Galliano’s Circus
  • Q is for Quarry (Kinsey Millhone #17) – Sue Grafton
  • Wedding Bells for the East End Library Girls (Library Girls #5) – Patricia McBride
  • Meet Me at the Seaside Cottages – Jenny Colgan

What I watched

  • We have watched a couple of episodes of Supernatural season 5 but have somewhat lost interest now. We have been watching Only Connect and Richard Osman’s House of Games instead. Some evenings we watch something with Brodie. We ran out of Gladiators and so have been watching Ninja Warrior UK and The Floor is Lava. One weekend we introduced him to Lord of the Rings with The Fellowship of the Ring. He found a couple of bits a little boring but loved the rest and went straight into play-fighting orcs.
  • I’ve been absolutely binging Byker Grove and am finally into 1998 which means I actually recognise most the cast and remember some of the storylines.
  • My sister and I are still subjecting ourselves to season three of And Just Like That. We reached episode six and I thought that must be the end of it, but no, it goes on for 12 episodes!

What I did

  • We had the first week of the month off so apart from having a big clear out of Brodie’s room to prepare for his birthday we also had time for some day trips. We visited some of our favourites like Fife Zoo and the St Andrews Aquarium, but also tried a new place – Pitmuies Gardens – which was lovely and reminded me a bit of Old Thatch.
  •  On weekends we managed to get out for a few geocaching walks (we are up to 112 finds now) and even fitted in a round of crazy golf before beginning the cache hunting one day.
  • We enjoyed the last of the really good weather in the garden and finally pulled our carrots and picked some blackberries. Some of the blackberries were probably bigger than some of the carrots…
  • Last weekend we went to a Lego event (sort of like a comic con but for Lego) and managed to be very restrained in our spending.

 

How was your August?

*Books About Bookshops and Libraries

Posted in Personal Experiences | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Monday #675

Posted on September 1, 2025 by Fiona

It’s September first today so apart from the Hogwarts Express departing from King’s Cross, it’s also the first day of autumn. It’s still fairly warm right now but I’m already wondering if my cosy cardigans will last another winter…

August round up

and

Reading The Island of Adventure to Brodie

For those of us looking forward to autumn rather than clinging onto summer (like me) why not revisit Stef’s list of autumn reads?

Autumn Reads

Posted in Blog talk | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Secret Seven covers through the years

Posted on August 27, 2025 by Fiona

I’ve done several of these posts so far, but left the Secret Seven as, honestly, I don’t rate them as highly as I do most of Blyton’s other series.

Janet and Peter

For completeness sake, and as there wouldn’t be enough to do a whole post on them, we’ll start with the two prequels to the Secret Seven. At Seaside Cottage (1947) is about Peter and Janet, while Secret of the Old Mill (1948) introduces the other five and sees them begin their secret society.

Both books have beautiful Eileen Soper wrap-around dust jackets.

First editions

The Secret Seven books were published by Brockhampton between 1949 and 1963, and had three different illustrators.

First up was George Brooks with books 1-4, then George Kay with books 5-7, and finally Burgess Sharrocks completed the series with books 8-15. My initial impression is that like with the Noddy books later artists go a good job of keeping the style and look consistent, but will that hold up to a closer examination?

Interestingly there are also three different styles of first editions – though these don’t align with the changes of artist.

Book 1, The Secret Seven is the only one to have the illustration contained in a circle.

It then had a second hardback edition – also by Brockhampton – in 1950, which matched the style for books 2-10. The three below are George Brooks covers. As you can see the new edition of the first book features the same scene but in full.

Then here are three by Bruno Kay. Although not shown above, all the covers did have an illustrated spine showing either more of the scene on the front, or a vignette of another part of the story.

First edition dust jacket by Bruno Kay
First edition dust jacket
First Edition Cover of Secret Seven Win Through, Illustrated by Bruno Kay.

And three by Burgess Sharrocks, the final four books of the series dropped the banner at the top and placed the text straight on the illustration. That works fine on a pale cloudy-sky but on top of the slatted shed it’s a bit harder to read.

Having looked more carefully I think that Kay and Brooks are very difficult to tell apart, while Sharrocks is slightly different, though it’s subtle and could easily be attributed to the passage of time/changing of popular style for cover artwork.

I’ve seen the banner style covers on other books – Eric Leyland is the main one which comes to mind – although it’s hard to find good-quality pictures of his books, or much information really. I gather he was an author of adventure stories for boys around the same time Blyton was writing.

It’s also worth mentioning that the first editions had printed boards under the dustjackets. I always referred to them in my head as the paper doll covers, as that’s what the line of hand-holding children looked like to me. And then I wrote that online and someone gently pointed out that they are the Seven children of the Secret Seven. I guess that makes more sense!

All of mine are blue, but there are several other colours they came in. Books 13-15 had the painted ‘S’ on them.

Seeing double (or triple) with Knight and Brockhampton

The first paperbacks came five years after the final book was first published and were by Knight.

Books 1 and 2 had two Knight paperbacks, both using the same artwork by Derek Lucas. This was then used again by Brockhampton to produce a series of Hardbacks. Books 3-15 used the second style of Knight paperback, and the the Brockhampton Hardback.

As you can see these use the same artwork, though the positioning and colourings are slightly different, as are the title banners.

The Brockhampton ones are mostly missing from the Cave which makes me wonder if they were only produced in small numbers.

Anyway, these are pretty decent covers.

Also done in this style is a paperback (the only one as far as I know) of At Seaside Cottage. This isn’t in the Cave of Books so I don’t have a date or artist.

The uncredited era

Knight then produced three more paperback editions between 1976 and 1987, all of them with uncredited covers.

Up first are the random children from 1976, who are not from a TV series, but have been photographed as the Secret Seven. (See also the photo covers for the Five Find Outers)

I may have been unkind in my choices (I more or less picked randomly) as none of these are great covers.

First we have children in a tree. Admittedly this probably looks a lot better on a full-sized book rather than a small photo online, but it took me a minute to realise they weren’t scrambling up a grassy hill.

Then we have, at least, an action-shot, but it looks exactly what it is – staged.

And last we have children sitting about – perhaps looking at something that we can’t see -doing nothing. How thrilling!

After that, we have what I can only describe as bad hallucination covers from 1984. I do love a good optical illusion but these are wild. They’re so bad they feature in my rundown of Worst Ever Blyton Covers.

Below are three of them, not the worst ones as they’re already in the link above, but still. They remind me of bad sci-fi where improbable things like ten-foot spiders attack.

It’s as if they couldn’t decide which scene to feature so thought why not have them all? Regardless of whether it makes sense or instead makes it look as if giant children/dogs/walls are taking over the world. No wonder these are uncredited – even though the actual individual scenes are perfectly well drawn, would you want your name attached to these?

And finally, and probably the best of this uncredited Knight run from 1987 are these colourful ones. They definitely look dated now, but they at least have interesting scenes which convey action. The action-scenes combined with the 3D effect of the covers make it seem as if the characters are sometimes about to burst out of the book and into the real world.

And I will leave it there for tonight. I reckon I’ll get two more posts out of the remaining covers.

Posted in Illustrations and artwork | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Monday #674

Posted on August 25, 2025 by Fiona

Seeing as I’ve gotten so far behind on Brodie’s reviews I thought I’d better crack on with another one and hopefully catch up eventually. Ironically I had been thinking how fun a Byker Grove blog would be. The clothes and hairstyles alone would give me plenty to write about. I will refrain however as it would involve rewatching from the beginning again and dedicating far more time than I have! I’ll just have to hope that someone else writes one!

Secret Seven covers through the years

and

Reading The Secret Island to Brodie

While skimming through The River of Adventure last week I paused on this illustration. I haven’t uploaded this one to the blog before – at least not in full. I did use part with Bill in it for the header of our fanfic of Bill and Allie’s wedding. There wasn’t enough of Allie on this page to use so the Allie is from The Mountain of Adventure instead – but the loving look on Bill’s face was perfect.

Posted in Blog talk | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Reading The River of Adventure to Brodie

Posted on August 24, 2025 by Fiona

We read this from October 10th to 24th, 2024 so I’m nearly a year behind in reporting on it! I also didn’t take notes at the time so these are my best recollections. (I’m learning from my mistakes and have gone back to jotting down at least some of his comments from what we’re reading right now).

Foreworded is forearmed?

The River of Adventure is my least favourite of the series so I was a bit less enthusiastic than Brodie was about reading this.

We started with the foreword where Blyton explains that she had planned to end the series after Bill “proposes” to Allie at the end of The Ship of Adventure, but had so many letters from children that she added another two books. Those being the brilliant Circus of Adventure (and obviously the best book of the series) and this last one, River. Brodie said he was glad she didn’t end with six or else we wouldn’t be reading this book right now.

On the fly updates

I can read in my head a lot faster than I can read out loud so my eyes are usually at least half a sentence ahead of my mouth, giving me time to do things like change from one terrible accent to another as I can see who has spoken, or swap out queer for strange. Sometimes half a sentence isn’t enough and it’s a scramble to finish a sentence that’s going downhill in a way that makes sense, but I do my best.

As the Mannering-Trents are abroad through most of this book I made a lot of little word changed – a lot as in a small number of words were used a lot of times.

Throughout I called the people from the un-named country the locals or the local people rather than the natives as while there’s nothing wrong with saying native people, saying the natives has a somewhat colonial sound.

Although Tala and Oola work for the family I toned down much of the deferential language used. For example less of the sir and master from Tala and none of the Lord from Oola. Tala was asked to do things instead of ordered (the subtle difference between working for someone and serving them), and I toned down the terror and screaming about the gods coming near the end.

I also made a couple of minor changes regarding the girls needing looked after. Bill asked the children to stay together, rather than asking the boys to keep the girls with them. Likewise Philip doesn’t think of the two girls but thinks of all their safety.

The River of Surprise

I swear he was more surprised at things in this book than any of the others we’d read before.

The ladder of knives, the snake charmer, an escaping snake, Oola bringing a snake to Philip – these all had him on the edge of his seat.

He went through a whole range of feelings about the snake escape. The snakes were fake – to begin with – then they had to be real as one had got out. Then maybe they weren’t actual poisonous* snakes. Likewise the one Oola brought later must have had his mouth sewn up too, but no it hadn’t –WHY WOULD HE BRING A DANGEROUS SNAKE?? What a roller-coaster.

He was thrilled at Raya Uma thinking he’d been “poisoned” by the bargua and thought him very stupid. I don’t think Brodie always remembers that we, the readers, have knowledge that certain characters, like Uma here, don’t.

Miscellaneous interruptions

There was a distinct lack of sympathy for the children’s “colds”and I ad to explain (again) that flu is a lot worse.

He loved the idea of a convalescence and wished he could do the same (so do I for that matter!)

I gave him a chance to guess what Sinny-Town was (not all the interruptions come from him, just most of them!) but he didn’t know. I think that’s fair enough as we don’t say cine as in cine-camera etc much these days, and the cine in cinema is pronounced differently. Of course none of the book characters guess it either, but that’s only so that the surprise isn’t spoiled too soon.

He asked me what gimcrack meant. I assumed (correctly) from the context that it meant tat but I looked it up to check just in case.

Like me, he had difficulty understanding and picturing the layout of the underground scenes in the book. For a time he seemed to think they were at the bottom of the waterfall.

He loved the treasure find and said he would definitely have taken a sword, but wanted to know if there were any shields too. (It’s as if he thinks I can look around the fictional room for information not in the text sometimes…)

Lastly he was disappointed (as always) that they weren’t staying to see it all excavated. And that there’s no next book, either.

My experience

I went accent-less for this one which made a nice change. The broken English from Oola and Tala were enough to make them distinct without me attempting an unspecified Middle-East accent.

As I can’t whistle Kiki’s police whistle was a pain to replicate and sounded awful. More or less me just saying phweeeeeee in a high pitched voice.

I spotted a new nitpick on this re-read too. Jack apologises to Bill who hadn’t heard Kiki’s newest achievement (the police whistle) and yet he must have heard it the night before as she has done it in the bedroom, and Bill knocks on the door saying “Who wants the police? They’re here. Open in the name of the law!”. It’s possible he only heard her shouting for the police but given how loud and piercing the whistle is, it doesn’t seem likely.

After we finished he said his favourite characters were all of them which is his usual response – but I think it was probably the bargua as he talked about that the most often. He even drew it. Fearsome, isn’t it?

 *Snakes are venomous, not poisonous** and yes we discussed this while reading it. According to Steve Backshall – if it bites you and you die it’s venomous, but if you bite it and you die, it’s poisonous. Sort of surprising that Blyton didn’t know that, given her background with nature and wildlife.

**If we’re being pedantic there are a small number of snakes that are both poisonous and venomous but as the children were never going to be eating snakes all we had to worry about was them being bitten and thus envenomed and not poisoned.

Posted in Book reviews | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Letters to Enid part 76: From volume 4, issue 13.

Posted on August 20, 2025 by Fiona

Previous letters pages can be found here.

Letters page from Volume 4, issue 13.
July 18th – July 31st, 1956.

OUR

LETTER PAGE

All about Birds today!

A letter from Anne Lacey, Cardiff.
Dear Miss Blyton,
One day, over a year ago, a little blue cock budgerigar perched on my brother’s bedroom window-sill, and came in quickly when my brother spoke to it. We could not find his owner, so we bought him a cage. We kept him and called him Joey. Last February my brother was on a country walk, and he saw another blue budgy in a tree, and it was very frightened of the sparrows. My brother quickly ran home and collected the cage with Joey in it and then stood on a gate and held up the cage. The little hen bird (as she turned out to be) quickly swooped down to the cage and was happily put inside it. My father built an aviary and a nesting-box inside our shed, and after a fortnight the first egg appeared. Julie, the hen bird, laid seven eggs altogether, and she hatched out two blue boy budgies.
Love from Anne Lacey.

(I have delayed printing your letter, Anne, until I had two other short letters to go with it, because it is such a long one-but so interesting. I have sent you my letter-prize, and hope you like it.)

A letter from Barbara Groom, Chesterfield.
Dear Miss Blyton,
I am writing to tell you of a house-martins’ nest under the eaves of our house. Last year I was looking out of the window when I saw three martins flying about. Then I noticed them building the nest.
I told Mummy and Daddy, but no one else, in case they were frightened away. This year they have come again to the nest and have three babies.
Love from
Busy Bee Barbara Groom.

(I liked your letter very much, Barbara-very well written.)

A letter from Carol Frost, Rochester.
Dear Enid Blyton,
The other day I found a young sparrow that could not fly. I put it out on our lawn – and soon a lot of other sparrows found it. After a while these sparrows put the baby on to one of their backs, and bit by bit it reached its nest. Has anyone seen a thing like this before?
Yours sincerely, Carol Frost.

(Well, readers-have you seen such an interesting thing before? Let me know so that I can tell Carol.)

A little insight into how the letters page works this week – with a letter being held until it could be fitted in with two shorter ones. Did Blyton deliberately look for two short letters about birds or was it just a handy coincidence that there were two such letters? That’s assuming that Blyton read all the letters herself and didn’t have someone who picked a selection for her to choose from.

Finding one homeless budgie is interesting (we found a runaway – or should that be flyaway? – cockatoo not that long ago) but to find and adopt two? That’s surely rare.

Sparrows are common but I don’t know how many people have seen sparrows rescuing another.

House martins are also fairly common – we had a nest several years running in the eaves of our house when I was a child. I had assumed they were swallows at first, as I’d heard of swallows from stories like Thumbelina, but not house martins.

Posted in Magazines | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Monday #673

Posted on August 18, 2025 by Fiona

I missed a couple of weeks – Brodie turned 8 and we have been enjoying the last couple of weeks of the school holidays before he goes into p4.

Last Monday was Enid’s birthday – she was born 128 years ago.

Letters to Enid part 76

and

Reading the River of Adventure to Brodie

In (belated) honour of Blyton’s birthday why not revisit birthdays from her books?

Blyton on birthdays

 

Posted in Blog talk | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

July 2025 round up

Posted on August 1, 2025 by Fiona

What I read

I hit 100 books in July which is good considering my year goal was already set at 150. After take a Val McDermid break I returned to her books, but I read other things too!

but I only read two BABALS (and one about publishing.)

So I read:

  • Deadhead (Sweetpea #3) – CJ Skuse
    The Distant Echo     (Karen Pirie #1) – Val McDermid
  • Everyone on this Train is a Murderer (Ernest Cunningham #2) – Benjamin Stevenson
  • Love Theoretically – Ali Hazelwood
  • Cross and Burn (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #8) – Val McDermid
  • The Adventurous Four
  • Report For Murder (Lindsay Gordon #1) – Val McDermid
  • A Darker Domain (Karen Pirie #2) – Val McDermid
  • Splinter the Silence (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #9) – Val McDermid
  • Old Ellon – Linda Birnie
  • Old Collieston and Slains – Ellie Ingram
  • Old Cruden Bay and Port Erroll – Jim Buchan
  • The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Hercule Poirot #1) – Agatha Christie
  • Dead Beat (Kate Brannigan #1) – Val McDermid
  • Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her – Melanie Rehak
  • The 39 Steps (Richard Hannay #1) – John Buchan
  • Stone and Sky (Rivers of London #10) – Ben Aaronovitch
  • N is for Noose (Kinsey Millhone #14) – Sue Grafton
  • A Novel Way to Die (Nevermore Bookshop #6) – Stephanie Holmes

I ended the month still working through:

  • Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
  • Mr Galliano’s Circus
  • O is for Outlaw (Kinsey Millhone #15) – Sue Grafton
The Adventurous Four, 1st Edition Cover by E.H Davie

What I watched

  • We are still on Supernatural season 5 and have also started on the new series of Only Connect – being the first round we generally manage to get some right answers.
  • I finally chose my next watch – Byker Grove! I was going to start with the series I remember watching but couldn’t really remember what I had seen so I started back with series 1 from 1989. So far nothing is familiar except the Grove building, Geoff, Alison and (a younger than I remember) PJ and Duncan, but sooner or later I will start to recognise the plots I’m sure!
  • My sister and I are still subjecting ourselves to season three of And Just Like That. Last time I said it was season two, but I discovered this week it’s actually season three and I can scarcely believe we have made ourselves watch so much of it!
  • We watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with Brodie which scared him a little.

What I did

  • Failed to protect our strawberries from slugs and snails but have managed to pick a few uneaten ones for ourselves. Our peas grew huge and we picked them before we went away – the pods were a bit too stringy to eat sadly but the peas were good.
  • Ewan and I have continued to play Blue Prince – a puzzle game on the Playstation (for some sort of explanation see last month’s round up). We have passed day 100 now and are hopefully closing in on the final objective – reclaiming the throne. We just need the scepter, the crown of blueprints and the cursed idol all on the same day and enter the throne room with them… this could take a while.
  • We had our family holiday in Collieston (hence the reading of the books about the area). We had fantastic weather and visited lots of nice places including Dunnottar Castle,  Aden Country Park, Hackley Bay, Ellon, New Slains Castle, Cruden Bay, Newburgh Beach, and Haddo House. We also spent time in Collieston at the harbour which is now a popular place for swimming, and did some geocaching and rockpooling.
  • I did a jigsaw of a bookshelf where all the book titles/authors were puns, and did a little more of the Famous Five Colouring Book.
Old Slains Castle
Old Slains Castle
Old Slains Castle
Old Slains Castle
Old Slains Castle
Old Slains Castle
Aden House
Aden House
Aden House
View from our holiday home balcony
Newburgh Beach
Newburgh Beach
Collieston
Collieston Harbour
Collieston Harbour
Bookshop in Ellon
Bookshop in Ellon
Dunnottar Castle
Dunnottar Castle

How was your July?

Posted in Personal Experiences | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Letters to Enid part 75: From volume 4, issue 12.

Posted on July 30, 2025 by Fiona

Previous letters pages can be found here.

Letters page from Volume 4, issue 12.
July 4th – July 17th, 1956.

OUR

LETTER PAGE

A letter from Marilyn Bowder, Sunbeam 13688. (Please send me your address.)
Dear Enid Blyton,
I am sending you a 3s. Postal Order to help the blind children. I have worked for this by doing odd jobs, like washing up and drying. Also by making felt brooches.
This is how I make them: I cut out some felt into the shape of an animal or a fish. Then I cut out another one just the same, and sew them together-but I leave a little space open so that I can fill the animal shape, then when I have packed it well I stitch the rest up. Then I sew a little gold safety pin at the back, and the brooch is complete. I sell these for 2d. each. Goodbye from
Marilyn Bowden (Sunbeam)

(You sent a very interesting letter, Marilyn, and I thought that the way you described the making of your little brooches was excellent – other children may like to make them too. I am sending you the letter prize – but please send me your address.)

A letter from Christine Morris, F.F. member.
Dear Enid Blyton,
Our tortoise is called Speedy. When Speedy is near the bird-dish with water in it, the birds sometimes sit on his back to drink the water !
Love from your club member,
Christine Joy Morris.

(What a lovely name for a tortoise, Christine – and how you must laugh when the birds perch on his shell!)

A letter from Pamela Smith, c/o Sgts. Mess, R.N.Z.A.F., Lauthala Bay, Fiji.
Dear Enid Blyton,
My school friends and I have a very good Nature Club. We all have scrap books and stick pictures of birds, animals and plants and butterflies in, and write about them too. Would you, through your magazine, ask girls in other countries who have little clubs too, to write to us? I am eleven years old. In our club we have little badges which we wear under our collars. I am in Form I. Marbles is the game in season at our school now.
Yours sincerely,
Pamela Smith.

(I have spoken of your request in my own letter, Pamela, and maybe you will hear from other Nature Clubs here. I hope you will be able to answer any letters you get.)

Another week where the prize goes to a fundraising letter – though it’s interesting to see just how many different ways that children could think of to make money. There are some classics like cake & candy stalls and getting paid for chores and odd jobs (and why not – they obviously work!) but there are also some pretty inventive ideas like making felt badges too.

Speedy (and yes – what a name for a tortoise!) made me think of Jemima trying to ride Looney – only I don’t think that tortoises can roll over to dislodge unwanted riders!

The letters often make me going looking things up – particularly when they comes from parts of the world I know little about. Fiji was a British colony at the time this was written (and was until 1970) while New Zealand had gained independence in 1947. Although Blyton touched on nature, culture and history of other nations in some of her educational books it must have been fascinating for nature-loving children to find out about nature in far-flung parts of the world so I hope that Pamela had some other clubs get in touch.

Posted in Magazines | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Monday #670

Posted on July 28, 2025 by Fiona

July is almost over. That means it’s almost August and Brodie’s 8th birthday. We started Mr Galliano’s Circus last night which he says he DID NOT LIKE – but he was overtired after being away for three nights with his Granny, so I’m going to persevere with it tonight. What’s not to like? There may be no lions but there are tigers and bears* (oh my!).

Letters to Enid part 75

and

July round up

mr galliano's circus

Mr Galliano with his hat firmly on the side of his head – meaning he is in a good mood.

*These actually show up in the second book, but still, there are elephants and chimpanzees and all sorts of interesting things in the first book.

Posted in Blog talk | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Reading the Circus of Adventure to Brodie

Posted on July 27, 2025 by Fiona

I keep getting further and further behind on these – we read The Circus of Adventure between September 9th and October 9th 2024. At this point I’m not sure how many of his comments I’m going to be able to remember – but let’s see!

The best book in the series

Well, that was my opinion anyway. I was really hoping he would like it as much as I did – so there was a fair bit of pressure on my reading!

I think he definitely found this the most tense book in the series – he was on tenterhooks at several points such as:

  • Bill and Allie being attacked, the children being rounded up and Jack not being with the others (he was concerned as to whether everyone was going to be OK and about Jack being left on his own).
  • Jack exploring the castle for the first time, he was willing him not to make any noises and was exceptionally tense when the ladder fell and made a racket. He was also pretty worried when Jack went behind the portrait and got stuck.
  • At the trapeze rescue, which he was adamant he wouldn’t want a ride on.
  • At the bears escaping and Philip taming them, though I think he knew Philip could do it!

Reading the book

As I’ve probably said many times before – reading one of the books out loud to someone else is different to reading it to myself. It’s slower for one thing, and I definitely find myself noticing certain details for the first time.

I definitely notice more specific examples of the differences between how the boys and the girls are treated. When reading myself I feel like I probably skim quite quickly over the filler parts whereas reading aloud I have to slow down.

With that in mind I made a few minor tweaks when reading:

  • I toned down the (judgemental) uses of foreigner and good English education.
  • I also toned down the comments about Gussy’s long hair to make it more that it was unusual than plain bad.
  • You two girls unpack everything,’ she said… Arrange the boys’ things in the big chest in their room. I changed to You children unpack everything,’ she said… Boys put your things in the big chest in your room.
  • Multiple times Allie was relegated to only being referred to as his/Bill’s wife. I used her name instead.
  • He had given up struggling. What was the use? He would only get hurt, and he could see that if the girls were going to be captured, he certainly must go with them to look after them as best he could I changed the last bit to something more like he should stick with them.
  • The Tauri-Hessian folk were less dirty.
  • Pedro was a circus boy rather than only a circus boy.
  • The girls became with the boy who manages the bears instead of belonging to him.

All very tiny changes which don’t alter the story at all, and involve the absolute minimum of word changes, preserving as much of the natural rhythm and feel of the era as possible. And yet they make a fairly big difference to the overall attitude to the girls and non well-to-do British people.

I also noticed a few nitpicks that I’m sure I’ve not picked up on before.

  • Jack exits the castle through an unlocked trapdoor into the bell tower. This seems like a major security flaw! It doesn’t sound as if the trapdoor would be hard to find at all, and even if it was locked it could easily be sawn through/burned/smashed. Any determined looters/anti-monarchists/terrorists could then easily smash through the painting at the other end of the passage.
  • Initially Toni is Spanish – Toni was Spanish, but he understood English well, though he did not speak it fluently. Later Pedro says that Toni and Bingo understand Italian best. I can speak to them in Italian, which they know best, and it’ll be quicker. It’s possible that Toni is Spanish but is good with Italian, and Bingo is Italian, but there’s no need for making it that complicated.

I found the castle scenes – the King’s rescue particularly – a bit trying as somehow (despite this being my favourite of the series) I have never got all those passages and corridors and rooms in my head so it’s hard for me to imagine (or explain!) exactly what’s going on and who is where, or how they got there.

There were some characters with accents in this book – mostly Tauri-Hessian, which sounds just like a bad european accent which crosses from French to German and back (the same as most European characters in the books). It’s an all-purpose bad accent.

Pedro is half-English so I didn’t attempt any Spanish for him, and the various other Circus characters got a mish-mash of English-ish and bits of accent when they spoke more broken English. Thankfully most of them didn’t have a lot of dialogue. Well, apart from Gussy who had a lot of dramatic speeches which got a bit tiresome! I mean, how do you pronounce Prince Aloysius Gramondie Racemolie Torquinel to begin with, let alone in a bad attempt at an imaginary accent delivered in a dramatic fashion??

Surprises along the way

Quite often the big reveals I’m waiting for to see Brodie’s reaction are a bit of a flop as he was expecting them, and yet there are lots of things that surprise him which I did not expect.

  • He was aghast that they had hens.

  • He was surprised by the hand-kissing through he went through a (thankfully) brief phase of bowing and kissing people’s hands after reading about Gussy doing it.
  • He was very shocked at the idea of putting Kiki in a cage (most pet birds are probably caged some/most of the time, free-range parrots are probably uncommon!)
  • He was appalled at cramming four people in the back of a car and three in the front what about seat belts??

One thing was both surprising and not surprising (Schrodinger’s surprise, if you will), and that was Gussy’s identity.

  • The children wonder if Gussy could be a prince in disguise and Brodie gasped – IS HE?? I could see him thinking that it explained a lot. But he eventually decided, like the children that no, he couldn’t be.
  • Then – gasp – he is a prince.
  • But is he REALLY a prince? 

Things he worked out:

  • Having more ice-cream after being sick would be a bad idea
  • Surky meant circus
  • The sword swallower’s sword was retractable (probably from YouTube)

Q&A

Questions always arise which is not surprising as the books were written a long time ago.

  • What’s a piebald horse – I have to admit I didn’t know this at his age either and I had to double-check I had it right.
  • Where is Tauri-Hessia? Is it a real place? – Like me he was disappointed that it was not real.
  • What’s junket? – I knew it was a dessert of some kind but I had to look up exactly what it is, and the definition I got was that it was a sort of pudding. Of course we say pudding when we mean dessert so he has pudding after tea which can be a biscuit or sweets or ice-cream or anything else sweet, and I had to explain it meant a specific kind of pudding so we lost a fair bit of time that night trying to define the more specific kind of pudding.
  • What’s an antechamber? I did know this but I ended up looking it up to make sure I was getting it right as I always start to doubt myself on the finer points.

Overall he loved this one, particularly (as always) Kiki’s scenes such as tormenting Gussy and saving the day at the end.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Book reviews | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Pretending to be Jack Trent

Posted on July 23, 2025 by Fiona

Anyone who’s read the adventure series will know what Jack Trent is obsessed with. Birds, photography and adventures, probably in that order!

Well, on holiday last week I had my camera of course, and on a walk along the cliffs we spotted a rock covered in gulls and it reminded me of The Sea of Adventure. This was definitely on a smaller-scale, but it still made me think of Jack’s excitement at seeing all the sea birds nesting in the cliffs.

So here are some of my best attempts at being Jack from my holiday (click/tap on any to see them full-sized). There were supposed to be a few more photos than I have included, but for some reason my SD card stopped working about three-quarters of the way through transferring the photos to my laptop, and is now corrupted. I’ve had no luck recovering any of the remaining photos despite trying several methods. I suppose that’s the modern equivalent of dropping a roll of photo out of an analogue camera or someone opening the darkroom door mid-developing of pictures.

The photos that started it all

The seagulls we spotted from our walk from Collieston to Hackley Bay. Somehow much more interesting and picturesque than the ones you see all around the bins in cities!

Unlike Jack I am no bird expert. Even with Google search results at my fingertips I’m not completely sure what kind of gulls these are.

I suspect they are lesser black-backed gulls but they could be herring gulls or kittiwakes. (I used this guide to try to figure it out. Can’t see the leg colour but the darker grey body seems to match the black-backed photo.) Any bird experts willing to wade in?

Tired arms in Hackley Bay

A rock at the back of Hackley Bay was covered in house martin nests and we could see the chicks practically hanging out of the nests waiting to be fed.

Guaranteed whichever nest I focussed on was the one which didn’t get fed, and I spent ages holding up my heavy camera waiting and waiting and eventually I did get a shot of a parent feeding a chick. They’re so fast, flying in, barely a second or two feeding then they’re off again. I bet Jack would have had a tripod for this.

Pretending to be Philip Mannering for a moment

We were lucky to find a few live crabs at Hackley Bay (though no-one was remotely interested in picking them up for a pocket pet!) and a starfish. Jack probably wouldn’t have wasted his precious film on crabs, but with a digital camera I had no concerns.

We also caught at least half a dozen smaller crabs back at Collieston harbour (Brodie’s new fishing net was put to good use!) and a couple of little things I call shrimpy things. I Googled rockpool shrimps and it turns out that’s exactly what they’re called.

And then there were the seals. Sadly two third of my seal photos were lost in the corruption, but I have a few at least. These were taken at Newburgh Beach where most of the signs guiding you say SEALS ⇒ and not beach.

Jack would definitely have used up some of his film on these seals. They were lying in a big tangled line along the edge of the Ythan (the river that cuts the beach in two) and constantly fighting for a bit more space. I had a video of them doing just that, and the tremendous noise they were making but yep, that’s lost too.

There were also a large number of ducks on the Ythan not far from the seals.

Back to Jack

Up at New Slains Castle there were rocks out to sea with more gulls and what I think are a few cormorants.

Plus earlier in the week we saw some swans and cygnets at Aden Country Park.

The geese photos from Haddo House are lost, except for the one from my phone with Brodie feeding them. I’m not sure how interested Jack would be in swans and geese. Birds out in the wild perhaps, but not so much ones on country house lakes?

Collieston

Here’s where we were on holiday. The harbour was a perfect sheltered spot for swimming (or should I say bathing!), with plenty of rock pools and sand.

We were further back from the harbour, but it still only took a few minutes to walk down. We were looking out over the cliffs to the south, towards Hackley Bay.

Collieston had a history of smuggling with fishermen bringing in illicit booze to quiet coves and caves, and the farmers loading it into their carts to transport it inland. There is even rumours of secret passages in the area. We didn’t find any, but I bet the Mannering-Trents would have!

 

Posted in Nature | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Monday #639

Posted on July 21, 2025 by Fiona

It was somewhat ambitious of me two weeks ago to aim for two posts, considering I was going off on holiday. The holiday is over (sadly!) so back to business now.

Pretending to be Jack Trent

and

Reading the Circus of Adventure to Brodie

Not my illustration – but I did the colouring! Five on a Treasure Island from the Famous Five Colouring book. I’m now on Five Go Adventuring Again, and trying to add more shading and highlights but I’m not very artistic!

Posted in Blog talk | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Letters to Enid part 74: From volume 4, issue 11.

Posted on July 10, 2025 by Fiona

Previous letters pages can be found here.

Letters page from Volume 4, issue 11.
June 20th – July 3rd, 1956.

OUR

LETTER PAGE

A letter from Eileen Kelley, Kuwait, Persian Gulf.
Dear Enid Blyton,
I thought you might like to hear about two sparrows who have built their nest in our garage. At the back there is a bundle of raffia and the sparrows must have thought that it was very good for building nests, because they built their whole nest with it! I think they were very lucky to have their nesting materials at the back of the garage, instead of having to go and hunt for bits of straw. In our garden we have a sprinkler and every morning I switch it on for them, and if I forget they come to the outside of the window and twitter angrily, as much as to say, “Come and put our water on, please!” Don’t you think they are sensible little birds?
Yours sincerely,
Eileen Kelley.

(I certainly do, Eileen – and I think too, that your letter is so interesting and well-written, that it deserves my letter-prize this week.)

A letter from the Famous Five Club at Parkstone, Dorset.
Dear Enid Blyton,
I have joined your Famous Five Club, and I think it is fun. I told my friends about it, and they asked for a badge too, and now we have five members. We have a meeting-place and password, and have a signal too. We do enjoy it. We all like the badge with the heads of the Five on.
Cheerio for now, from
Valerie, Patsy, Brenda, Barbara and Pat.

(I am glad you have a Famous Five Club, children, and enjoy it. I always like hearing from any of my Clubs, and reading their interesting news.)

A letter from Jane Smalley, London, S.E.15.
Dear Enid Blyton,
For my birthday my Mummy and Daddy gave me a puppy. I could not think of a name for him. At last I thought of one, it was “Noddy.” Soon after I had him he had Hard Pad, and the vet. said he would not live, but he is now well and happy. Unfortunately the Hard Pad left him with twitches, and he nods his head as he is going to sleep. Isn’t it a coincidence that I called him “Noddy”!
Love from
Jane Smalley.

(It certainly was strange that you called him “Noddy,” Jane. Thank you for a most interesting letter !)

No fund-raising letters this week – but two about animals and one about a club.

I had to look up Hard Pad as I had never heard of it – but it turns out it’s also known as distemper which I had heard of. Most recently in an episode of All Creatures Great and Small. 

Posted in Magazines | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Monday #637

Posted on July 7, 2025 by Fiona

We are firmly into July now and the weather is starting to look better (except from a super heavy downpour this afternoon!). It is supposed to get hotter and sunnier as the week goes on so I will enjoy getting lots of washing hung outside (yes, that’s the stage of life I’m at now…).

Letters to Enid part 74

and

Reading the Circus of Adventure to Brodie

Why not revisit my thoughts on The Circus of Adventure before seeing what Brodie thought?

The Circus of Adventure

Posted in Blog talk | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Letters to Enid part 73: From volume 4 issue 10

Posted on July 6, 2025 by Fiona

Previous letters pages can be found here.

NB – a warning again for the use of wording that is considered derogatory and offensive in the UK (and potentially elsewhere) today. As I am transcribing these letters exactly as written by the child authors I will therefore be using it, though I wouldn’t be using it in any other circumstances.

The S-word has appeared in several previous letters pages now and I am starting to assume that Blyton only recently began working with a relevant charity or home hence the many letters all of a sudden.

Letters page from Volume 4, issue 10.
June 6th – 19th, 1956.

OUR

LETTER PAGE

A letter from Ruth Perry, Susan Stern, Susan Barnett and Jacqueline Levy, London, N.W.1.
Dear Miss Blyton,
We were very keen to do some- thing for the Spastics, so we decided to hold a sale. We held it in Jacqueline’s back garden. First we had a little show. There was a shed next door from which we served refreshments. People had to go through a gate in the hedge to reach it. Our teacher very kindly gave us two delicious cakes. We made 7s. on refreshments alone. Then we had the Sale. This was a great success, and we are pleased to send you £3 10s. for the Spastic children. We will soon be having a Fair. At our homes we have a circulating library with a charge of twopence a fortnight.
Yours sincerely, Ruth, Susan, Jacqueline and Susan.

(I have picked out your letter for the prize, children, because it gave me a very good picture of all you did. Excellent! I am sending you a book for your library.)

A letter from Lois de Jager, Middelburg, South Africa.
Dear Enid Blyton,
Our swallows here in South Africa have already left us. It seems queer not seeing them perching about around our house. We were sitting having our evening tea when we heard twitterings in the sky – and there, flying away to another country, we saw the first swallows leaving us. I hope they have a happy flight, wherever they go!
Yours sincerely,
Lois de Jager.

(I think maybe they have flown north to Britain, Lois-perhaps even to my home town here, for we have many flying high in the skies now!)

A letter from Janet Barley, Coventry.
Dear Enid Blyton,
I belong to your Famous Five Club. When I heard that the Home was having new prams I thought it would be nice to embroider a pillow case for one pram, and I do hope you like it. I send 14s. too, to help your funds.
Yours sincerely,
Janet Barley.

(You have embroidered the case beautifully, Janet – it is our Very,
Very Best One!)

 

A very typical letter page this week. A letter about wildlife sandwiched between two fund-raising letters. (Though the embroidered pillowcase is unique for far!)

As these are only a tiny fraction of the letters Blyton would have received it’s difficult to imagine just how many fairs and lending libraries and sales were being held every week or month and just how much money was being sent in for her various charities.

Posted in Magazines | Tagged , , | Leave a comment