Five Go to Mystery Moor

Posted on February 12, 2021 by Fiona

My last Famous Five review came in August last year, and that was Five Have a Wonderful Time. If you’re about to tell me that I have missed Five Go Down to the Sea, I haven’t, I just accidentally reviewed it before Wonderful Time…

Anyway, Five Go to Mystery Moor ranks at #17 in the series for me, which is pretty far down. According to the post where I did my rankings this is because it has a slow build up and the exciting end hasn’t stuck well in my mind.

A story in three parts

As usual, here are the distinct parts of the story as I see them;

  1. Time at the stables
  2. The tale of the Bartles and going camping
  3. Parcels dropping, the mist, kidnap and rescue

You could sub-divide the first part into pre and post boys arriving, and the second into more time at the stables and their time camping.

Where are the boys?

Just like with Five Have a Wonderful Time, we start with only some of the Five. This time it’s George, Anne and Timmy who are at Captain Johnson’s Riding School. Anne chose this as she loves horses, and the boys were going camping with friends. George is sulky (what’s new!) as she just wanted to spend the holidays with her cousins.

George’s sulkiness is compounded by the fact that there’s another girl-who-thinks-she’s-a-boy at the stables – Henrietta aka Henry. Instead of bonding over a love of boy’s attire the two of them can’t stand each other and call each other by their full first names.

But never fear – the machinations of Blyton means that Uncle Quentin succumbs to an unidentified illness, meaning the the Five can’t all meet up at Kirrin as planned. The girls are told to stay at the stables for another week, and Julian and Dick decide to come along too.

The gypsies

Blyton was fond of bringing gypsies and other travelling folk into her stories. We’ve already had Jo’s father and the gypsies they travelled with in Five Fall Into Adventure, the fair folk of Five Have a Wonderful Time (more distant relatives of Jo) and the Barneys from Five Go Down to the Sea.

The Mystery Moor gypsies are not terribly well described. None apart from Sniffer get names, and only his father has any sort of identity.

Sniffer is a skinny young boy who brings his horse to be seen by Captain Johnson as it is lame (for some reason when typing the introduction to this post I wrote Tinker, and I also wrote Tinker in my notebook while reading!). Sniffer’s a bit of a sorry character, much abused and beaten by his nasty father. He does have the comfort of his little dog, Liz, though. Sniffer’s father turns up trying to take the horse before it is recovered and has a bit of a stand-off with Julian, though it’s nowhere near as impressive as the ones with Mr Stick.

This gives us our first mystery: Why are the gypsies so desperate to travel onto the moors by a certain date? What’s waiting for them out there?

The second (and third) mysteries

We find a second mystery when the Five (well, minus George and Timmy and plus Henry) find old train tracks on the moor while riding.

Now, George and Henry are both pretty silly when it comes to fighting and arguing, but  actually think Julian is an ass to invite Henry along for the ride. He barely knows her, and he knows she and George don’t get along. It’s not just that George has taken a dislike to her, Henry goes out of her way to annoy George and vice versa. Who wants to be in the middle of that? OK, so he feels sorry for her being the only older one with a bunch of little kids, but if she felt that way herself she could have made more of an effort to get along with George.

Henry redeems herself somewhat by being insightful enough to know that George doesn’t really have a headache keeping her from going on the ride – she is George’s headache and she offers not to go.

George is quite hard on herself then – she realises she’s shot herself in the foot when they all go off without her, and she blames herself. To be honest, I’d have done the same, but perhaps for different reasons. If my family or friends had invited someone I hated I’d probably have feigned a headache to avoid the pain of spending the day with my enemy. George seems to have done it in the hope of the others disinviting Henry, however, as she is surprised and annoyed that they do go without her. So she is banking on them knowing the headache is fake, and wanting her to go more than they do Henry. Which is a bit manipulative, but I know that if she’d gone to Julian to ask him to disinvite Henry he would have said no and she would have ended up having a row with him.

Anyway – back on topic, they go without George and find train tracks on the moor, all old and overgrown, even broken in places. I couldn’t help but think that Brodie would love finding train tracks on a moor. Any straight lines he finds (tire tracks in snow, white lines on a football pitch) he calls train tracks and runs along shouting ‘chugga chugga choo choo!’ so real tracks would be beyond exciting for him.

The mystery of the tracks is easily solved, as they go to see old Ben the blacksmith who tells them all about it. It’s a straightforward solution – there were sand quarries on the moor and a family set up a little railway to transport the sand instead of using horses and carts.

What happened after that is the third mystery – though it’s not one the Five could solve. Ben’s story is one of the dark and creepy ones that Blyton occasionally uses, like the wreckers in Five Go to Demon’s Rocks and Five Go Down to the Sea, the drowning in The Ring O’ Bells Mystery and the abandoned nursery in The Rockingdown Mystery. Ben himself is reminiscent of the many knowledgeable old men in Blyton’s stories, Grandad from Five On Finniston Farm, Yan’s Grandad from Five Go Down to the Sea, Old Grandad from The Ring O Bells Mystery, Lucas from Five Have a Mystery to Solve, Jeremiah Boogle from Five Go to Demon’s Rocks…

The Bartles were the sand quarrying family, who ran afoul of a band of gypsies some 70 years before. The gypsies tore up the train tracks and derailed the train. One day soon after the Bartle brothers (9 or 10 strapping men) went to the quarry, and never returned. A mist had stolen over the moors, and gypsies had been seen going through the village…

Ben thinks that the gypsies murdered the brothers and threw their bodies into the sea – dark stuff for Blyton!

Investigations begin

To find out more about the gypsies George has Sniffer leave patrins, signs made of twigs and leaves, so they can follow him along to the gypsy camp. The gypsies are sufficiently rude as to make it clear they are hiding something.

Then it all becomes a bit accidental – more children are to arrive at the stables and there isn’t room, so the Five go off to camp on the moors. They follow the tracks to the old quarry and lo and behold, that’s only about a quarter mile from the gypsies’ camp.

That night the boys witness a plane flying low over the moors and a light shining from the gypsy camp. When they wander over to see during the day they find a proper lamp set in a hollow in the ground. Yet the gypsies claim to know nothing about it – or the plane.

The Five can’t work out what a plane could be doing without landing – obviously they’ve never read The Sea of Adventure!

The following night they make sure to watch for the plane and when it comes it drops a load of packets (I wonder if it dropped packets the night before too, and if the boys wouldn’t have seen/heard that). Something’s obviously afoot, even without opening a package to find American dollars.

As the gypsies are obviously up to something dodgy they decide to confiscate the packages and make off with them, back to the village.

The Mist

The phenomenon is called both mist and fog, though they are two different things. The Mist sounds more ominous (if you read Stephen King).

The mist – the first bad one in a few years – comes just as the Five are leaving the quarry with the packets. At first this seems a boon, it prevents the gypsies from following them, and all the Five have to do is follow the tracks back to Milling Green.

But the rugs holding the packets are heavy, and the boys decide to hide them in the old engine they found rusting in the gorse bushes. I’ve read this book a bunch of times and yet couldn’t tell you how this all played out, beyond them getting separated and lost.

The girls stay on the tracks, the boys walk back up, and go off to the side. However they can’t find their way back to the tracks and get lost. The girls decide to walk into the village for help but accidentally walk back to the quarry and get captured by the gypsies – a catalogue of errors, really.

Rescue

George hopes to send Timmy to find Julian and Dick, with Sniffer’s help. Sniffer’s father catches her writing a note and tells her she should write a note, and he will use it to lure the boys back so they can recover the packets. He hasn’t thought of how to deliver the note, though, so George tells him to use Timmy as per her original plan. The jokes on him – she’s sending it to Henry and signing it Georgina (just like she did in Five on a Treasure Island).

It doesn’t go entirely to plan, though, as Captain Johnson is away, leaving Henry and William to ride out to the rescue. Julian and Dick also eventually manage to return to the stables, and after a good breakfast courtesy of Mrs Johnson the whole lot go back out to the engine to recover the packets of money.

So that’s the story… next time I’ll go through my questions, comments and nitpicks.

Next post: Five Go to Mystery Moor part 2: George and Henry

Posted in Book reviews | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Miss Grayling’s Girls 7 – the rest of her teachers

Posted on February 10, 2021 by Fiona

I seem to preface an awful lot of posts with ‘It’s been a while since the last one of these’ lately. I have a terrible habit of enthusiastically starting a series of posts and then running out of steam despite having half-drafted ones remaining. I’m trying to be better at finishing things (hence On my bookshelf part 7 being published recently, a year and a bit after part 6).

If you’ve forgotten what came earlier, or weren’t reading this blog two or three, then here’s the past posts:

Miss Grayling’s Girls – an introduction
Miss Grayling’s Girls – the failures 
Miss Grayling’s Girls – the experiments
Miss Grayling’s Girls – the ones who almost messed it up
Miss Grayling’s Girls – the successes 
Miss Grayling’s Girls – her best teachers

Miss Parker

Miss Parker is the second-form mistress, and has a bit of a contradictory nature. She is often nicknamed Nosy Parker because of her large nose – and because she keeps sticking her nose into things the girls think are no concern of hers.

Certainly she was a most inquisitive person when she suspected any mischief was going on, and did not rest till she had got to the bottom of it.

Despite this she sometimes doesn’t take an interest in some of the things that she probably should.

Miss Parker did not often take any notice of Ellen. She was usually a quiet girl, with a name for bad temper, and Miss Parker was not at all interested in her, though sometimes surprised that her work was not better.

It’s no surprise that the girls leave Ellen to her own devices as she is indeed bad-tempered, but it is a shame that her form teacher simply writes her off and doesn’t wonder why a girl clever enough to get a scholarship is then struggling with the work. At least when she finds out that Ellen has been ill she is kind to her.

“You’re not up even to your ordinary work at the moment, let alone taking extra coaching. I shan’t expect much from you, nor will anyone else. So don’t worry.”

She also is said to worry about Ellen’s continuing poor work but puts it down to her still not being entirely well after her illness, as she notes that Ellen is paying attention in class and trying hard. Of course there is a lot more bothering Ellen and unfortunately Miss Parker doesn’t look any deeper. Then again, if she had, Ellen wouldn’t have tried to cheat and we wouldn’t have had the altercation between her and Darrell.

Miss Parker is described as strict but someone who occasionally has dreamy fits where she
forgets the class and sits gazing into the distance. Unsurprisingly the girls look forward to these rare moments and make the most of them! Yet Darrell says that She can’t stand anything vague or careless. It’s also said that she hates anyone messing with her time-table by being late.

She is sensible enough to know that Irene looking after Belinda isn’t a good idea, and forbids it after her first few days at the school

“That would mean the two of you getting lost. You’d probably be down in the swimming-pool waiting for a diving lesson whilst we were all up here doing maths.”

Miss Parker seems a fan of the outdoors and leads the girls on walks – seeing through Daphne’s attempts to get out of them. When one such walk is cancelled, and they instead have games and a picnic in the games hall she decides not to let Daphne know.

“No, you mustn’t disturb Daphne! She badly wanted to
have this extra coaching, Mam’zelle tells me, and was quite willing to forgo the walk. She would be willing to forgo the games and picnic too, I am sure. We mustn’t disturb her. When a girl shows herself to be as studious as that it would be a pity to spoil it all.”

She also forms part of the search-party when Daphne and Mary-Lou are found to be missing. It is she who walks back with Daphne, half-holding her up.

Miss James

The fifth form mistress, Miss James, is a tall spare woman of about fifty, whose curly grey hair framed a scholarly face with kind but shrewd hazel eyes. Moira describes her as easy-going to a point. Then look out! She changes from sweet to sour in the twinkling of an eye – and it’s bad for you if you don’t notice the change-over immediately. Still, Jimmy’s not a bad sort. She’s known as Jimmy when she’s sweet and James when she’s sour, according to Catherine.

We see very little of her in In the Fifth, though. Beyond her first lesson with the girls she hardly features! The fifth formers don’t play any tricks and are too busy with their pantomime for much trouble in class. Miss Potts deals with the poison-pen letters, I suspect Miss James has no idea about that.

She does show some sense in not encouraging ‘saint’ Catherine;

Catherine beamed. Yes – yes, she would help all she could. Miss James could depend on her, of course she could. She tried to catch the mistress’s eye, but for some reason Miss James steadfastly looked in the other direction.

She also promotes Darrell to head of fifth-form, though it was probably a joint decision as before.

Miss Oakes

When the girls reach the sixth form they fall under the care of Miss Oakes, who also teaches history. She seems to be liked well enough, despite not having a sense of humour.

I like Old Oakey. But I’ve often wished she had more sense of humour. She never, never, never sees a joke. But she always suspects there may be somebody leading her up the garden path. – Darrell

From what we see she it not very effective at handling Suzanne. Miss Oakes is always suspicious that Suzanne understands more English than she admits, but she doesn’t do anything about it other than think about having words with Mam’zelle Rougier.

She does however ‘deal’ with Gwen via some rather sharp words.

Miss Oakes was not interested in Gwen’s future school any more than she was interested in Gwen.

“You are not up to Higher standard, whatever school you happen to be in,” she said coldly.  “I can only hope that you will work  a little better this term than you have worked for the last two terms, Gwendoline. Would it be too difficult to leave me with a little better impression of your capabilities than I have at present?

She does appear insightful, however, I particularly like this insight into her thoughts from Last Term at Malory Towers.

Privately, Miss Oakes thought that Darrell and Sally would do much better at college than Alicia or Betty, although these to had quicker brains and better memories than either Sally or Darrell.

‘Being grown-up, and feeling free for the first time form bells and strict time-tables and endless classes, will go to Alicia’s head and Betty’s too. They won’t do a scrap of work at college! They’ll be out to dances and parties and meetings the whole time- and in the end sound little Darrell and solid little Sally will come away with the honours that Alicia and Betty should find it easy to get – but won’t!’

I think she has a point – but I’d hope that they’d learn to knuckle down if they found their marks slipping, much like Darrell did in her first form.

The two Mam’zelles

I’m not sure why Malory Towers requires two French mistresses, but two it has.

Mam’zelle Dupont is short, fat and generally genial. She is well-liked as she is reasonably easy-going, and can often be encouraged to chatter on about her nieces and nephews, wasting lesson time. She is generous with offers of extra coaching, but can become snappish and cross quickly if the girls’ work is extremely poor.

Mam’zelle Rougier is the opposite of her colleague, tall, very thin and almost always bad tempered. If she makes a joke is a feeble one about how hard the girls are going to work for her.

The only time she says something truly funny, it is probably quite unintentional;

I see no joke. It is not funny, teeth on the grass. It is time to see the dentist when that happens.

That was after Mam’zelle Dupont has laughed out a set of trick teeth.

The two mam’zelles cause a fair bit of bother in the school, and I’m not sure how helpful Miss Grayling finds them. Mam’zelle Dupont always falls for tricks, allows lessons to be disrupted (both her own and often others in the vicinity) and has ‘favourites’ based on their looks and charming smiles.

[They] both taught the Upper Fourth, but though actually Mam’zelle Rougier was the better teacher, plump little Mam’zelle Dupont got better results because she was friendly and had a great sense of humour. The girls worked better for her.

Then of course there’s the rivalry between the women, which comes to a head in Second Form at Malory Towers when they are both trying to cast the parts for a French play. Mam’zelle Rougier is sensible and casts the best French speakers, though she makes no regard for acting ability. Mam’zelle Dupont casts her favourites, the pretty girls who would look nice on stage. The poor girls have to swap back and forth each lesson until a rather nasty (but brilliant) set of drawings by Belinda are seen by the mam’zelles and they realise how foolish they have been. They are (probably briefly) best of friends after that, as two French women in a hostile English environment.

Miss Hibbert

A teacher of both English and drama, but only features in the third book.

Miss Hibbert did not look at all like a producer of plays. She was neat, with a well-fitting coat and skirt, and her hair, slightly wavy, was brushed well back. She wore a pair of glasses with rather thick rims. She was very efficient, and knew exactly how to pick the right actor for the right part.

Darrell explains how she does that;

“She tries us all out in almost every part several times. She does that for two reasons—she says that in that way she really does find the right actor for every part—and we all get to know every part of the play and work better as a team.”

Miss Hibbert gets annoyed by girls who don’t taking acting seriously, as evidenced by Gwen who is often ticked her off for being affected and silly in her acting. That does not bode well for Zerelda who we see to be an exceptionally over-dramatic and affected actress.

As soon as Zerelda arrives for the first rehearsal Miss Hibbert tells her off for having her hair back in it’s Lossie Laxton do, but allows her the role of Juliet as she says she has been practicing.

We’ve already been told that Miss Hibbert has her own way of dealing with stagestruck people who thought they could act – and Zerelda gets both barrels of it.

“How dare you behave like that? Sending the class into fits! Do you think that’s the way to behave in a Shakespeare class? They may think it comical but I don’t. Those are lovely lines you have been saying—but you have completely spoilt them. And do you really think it is clever to throw yourself about like that, and toss your head? Don’t you know that Juliet was young and gentle and sweet? You are trying to make her into some horrible affected film-star!”

“And why have you made yourself up like that?” demanded Miss Hibbert, roused to more anger by the giggles of the rest of the form. “I cannot tell you how horrible you look with that stuff on your face. You would not dare to go to Miss Peters’ class like that. I’m not going to put up with it. You may as well make up your mind, Zerelda, that you will never be an actress. You simply haven’t got it in you. All that happens is that you make yourself really vulgar. Now go and wash your face and do your hair properly.”

Well – that was Zerelda told. That may sound very harsh but at this point Miss Hibbert didn’t know that Zerelda was serious about being an actress, and thought that her performance was her playing the fool. When she does find out, she makes sure to talk to Zerelda and gives her some very good advice.

She is honest in saying that Zerelda doesn’t have the gift to be a great actress, and she also lacks one other thing.

“Well, Zerelda, in order to be able to put yourself properly into some other character, you have to forget yourself entirely—forget your looks, your ambitions, your pride in acting, everything! And it takes a strong and understanding character to do that, someone without conceit or weakness of any sort—the finer the character of the actor, the better he can play any part.
You are thinking of yourself too much. You were not Juliet being acted by Zerelda this afternoon—you were Zerelda all the time—and not a very nice Zerelda either!”

Then finishes with advising her on how to carry on from there, advice that Zerelda takes to heart and finds very helpful.

“You have let your foolish worship and admiration of the film-stars blind you, Zerelda. Why not try to be your own self for a while? Stop all this posturing and pretending. Be like the others, a schoolgirl sent here to learn lessons and play games!”…

“[A schoolgirl is] a very, very nice thing to be. You try it and see! I wouldn’t have been so hard on you if I’d known you had set your heart on being an actress. I thought you were just being ridiculous.”

Matron

Matron is not a teacher but she is an important staff member at Malory Towers, taking care of the girls outside of their lessons.

The girls just talk about going to see Matron as if there’s just the one, but it’s clear that there are four Matrons, one for each house. We only meet North Tower’s Matron but I expect they are all from a similar mould.

Matron is responsible for getting the girls settled in at the start of term, a job which includes checking their Health Certificates and making sure new girls are shown to their dorms.

She is also responsible for the doling out the girls’ pocket money, caring for their clothing and bedding, especially ensuring they properly repair anything that needs it.

Matron popped her head in and said she wanted Gwendoline.
“Oh, why, Matron?” wailed Gwendoline. “What haven’t I done now that I ought to have done? Why do you want me?”
“Just a little matter of darning,” said Matron.
“But I’ve done the beastly darning you told me to,” said Gwen,
indignantly.
“Well then—shall we say a little matter of unpicking and re-darning?” said Matron, aggravatingly. The girls grinned. They had seen Gwen’s last effort at darning a pair of navy-blue knickers with grey wool, and had wondered if Matron would notice.

Matron is kind but firm, and takes absolutely no nonsense from any of the girls. Although there is a sister in the san for girls who are very ill, Matron doles out medicines for minor complaints and according to Alicia, keeps a bottle of a particularly nasty one for malingerers like Gwen.

No— Matron simply never believed her. She would take her temperature and say, “My dear Gwendoline, you are suffering from inflammation of the imagination as usual,” and give her that perfectly horrible medicine.

Other teachers

There are of course other teachers, but we see very little of them so I can only provide a brief description.

Miss Linnie

Teaches art, though once she is referred to the sewing mistress in the fifth book. Miss Linnie is known for being easy going, so the girls can mess around in her classes a bit more than some others. She is young and has red hair done in little curls.

Miss Donnelly

Miss Donnelly is the actual sewing mistress. She is gentle, sweet tempered and gives nothing more than mild protests if the girls are misbehaving.

Miss Remmington

Miss Remmington is the games mistress, but is only mentioned in the first book. Alicia calls her Old Remington and implies she’s good at coaching, but

She won’t bother with the duds.

It is Miss Remmington who suddenly decides to hold a swimming display at half-term in First Form.

“So it would be nice this half-term, as it’s so hot, for your people to go down to the breezy pool, and see not only the beauties of the water, but the way their girls can swim and dive!” said Miss Remmington. “We will have a pleasant time down there and then come back for a strawberry and cream tea, with ices!”

Miss Carton

Miss Carton teaches history and is known for her sarcasm.

Miss Carton over there—see her—the one with the high collar and pince-nez glasses on her nose. She’s frightfully clever, and awfully sarcastic if you don’t like history. – Alicia

This is backed up in the Fourth Form.

Miss Carton, the history mistress, knew that the School Certificate form was well up to standard except for miseries like Gwendoline, who didn’t even know the Kings of England and couldn’t see that they mattered anyhow. She used her sarcastic tongue on Gwendoline a good deal these days, to try and
whip her into some show of work, and Gwen hated her.

Miss Greening

Only mentioned once that I can find, Miss Greening teaches elocution and the girls are advised to go to her for help with their pantomime in the fifth form.

Mr Young

I know that this series is Miss Grayling’s girls, and I’ve stretched that to include female teachers/Matrons (I said last time that these should be Miss Grayling’s ladies, if not for continuity) but I can’t miss out the only male teachers.

Mr Young is called both the music master and the singing master, as he takes both music and singing. As well as doing classes he also does individual singing lessons. It is said that he is either in a good temper, and the girls have to judge which and act accordingly. We only see him in Second Form (though he is mentioned in a couple of other books) where the girls play the chalk trick on him, this works well as he always sits on the stool and twirls around until it is the right height for him. He is also often slightly late for his own classes!

There he was, with his funny little moustache twisted up at the ends, his bald head with the three or four hairs plastered down the middle, his too-high collar, and his eyes large behind their glasses.

Mr Sutton

The other male teacher, and only mentioned in one book, Mr Sutton teaches carpentry, primarily to the first and second years.

Posted in Characters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Monday #410

Posted on February 8, 2021 by Fiona

As with every year it seems, February’s weather is worse than the previous winter months put together. So far we’ve had nothing but rain and snow, and we’re still in full lockdown until the start of March at least. Still, there’s a bright spot, and that is that nurseries should be able to resume from the 22nd, and that’s only two weeks away!

Miss Grayling’s Girls part 7: the rest of her teachers

and

Five Go to Mystery Moor

The class saw her back view at once, and gasped. Written across her tightfitting skirt in bright pink letters was the word “OY!” Even Darrell was surprised to see it so clearly, and suddenly felt very uncomfortable. It was one thing to make a patch of pink appear on somebody’s clothes—it could easily be explained away—but how could the word “OY!” be explained? It was quite impossible!

Mam’zelle’s OY causes Darrell some consternation in Second Form at Malory Towers.

 

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

If you like Blyton: The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks

Posted on February 5, 2021 by Fiona

Despite being known as a ‘children’s classic’ I have only read this series for the first time recently. I had seen the 1995 film before and had a certain fondness for it, but the notion of there being a book as well eluded me for a long time. I actually got the film for my Christmas and although I enjoyed it, it wasn’t a patch on the book!

I discovered it was a series in 2014 when I added the first book to my ‘to read’ shelf on Goodreads, though curiously I didn’t add the rest of the series until October last year. I read the first one on my Kindle in October, then while at work at the end of last year I decided to head into the children’s stacks and grab the rest of books as they were all there (in non-matching editions), and I wanted some books to keep me going over Christmas and into the new year if we didn’t reopen straight away.

The series comprises five books of which I’ve read the first three.

  1. The Indian in the Cupboard
  2. The Return of the Indian
  3. The Secret of the Indian
  4. The Mystery of the Cupboard
  5. The Key to the Indian

Who is the Indian, and what is the cupboard?

Little Bull (Little Bear in some editions) is an Iroquois chief from the 18th century. In the story, he begins as a plastic figure given to Omri by his friend Patrick, on his ninth birthday.

Omri is also given an old medicine cabinet by his older brother, and although that seems an odd present he is pleased as he loves secret hiding places for his private treasures.

The cupboard doesn’t have a key but Omri’s mother has a load of old keys and one of those – one she chose as a token from her grandmother before she died – fits the lock.

Omri put the Indian, which initially he was disappointed to receive as a gift, in the cupboard and locks him in, only to discover the next morning that the Indian has come to life, becoming a living, breathing man, but still just three inches tall.

The cowboy in the cupboard

Although the title of the book suggests it’s all about Little Bull, there are other figures brought to life by the cupboard.

Once Patrick knows what the cupboard can do he brings his cowboy figure (and horse) to life. The mistrust between these two tiny men leads to Little Bull being badly injured, and Omri bringing Tommy Atkins, a WW2 medic, to life briefly.

And lastly, as Little Bull has demanded a wife, Omri lets him choose a female figure to bring to life; an Iroquois woman called Twin Stars. In later books more Indians are brought to life, and other medics too.

One for Blyton fans?

On one hand I feel like there’s so much in here that Blyton could have written herself. On the other, Reid Banks has woven together some things that Blyton rarely, if ever, combined.

A magic key or piece or furniture that brings toys to life would fit perfectly into one of Blyton’s fantasy stories. Blyton has written many stories about toys who secretly come to life at night or whenever their children aren’t looking, and I’m sure there are stories about regular toys who are magically brought to life as well.

However, Reid Banks’ toys have something that Blyton’s wouldn’t – we discover along with Omri and Patrick that the toys are imbued with the spirits of real historical people. Little Bear was, or indeed is, a real Native American man from 200 years before, and so he behaves as such. He is naturally terrified of the giant Omri to begin with. He needs to eat and have somewhere safe to sleep, and of course to be kept a secret from Omri’s family. Whenever he is returned to plastic (as the key can do both) he returns to his place in the 18th century, and time passes the same for him as it does for Omri.

That takes us into territory that Blyton didn’t cover in her fantasy tales. Reid Banks begins with a wonderful fantasy which quickly becomes quite a stressful time for Omri – he has great responsibility to care for the tiny people he has brought to life, and as Patrick is rather blasé about them Omri has to battle his friend’s attitudes and actions too. Omri realises that as Little Bear and Boone (and later other ‘toys’) are real people they have to be treated as such regardless of their size. Later books also go deeper into the morals of changing historical events and the fall out of trying. There are several suspenseful scenes as the consequences of various actions are played out, and some tragedies too.

Blyton of course gave us more insightful novels than her fantasy ones (even in those the children debate whether or not their actions would be right or fair but it’s kept reasonably simple) such as The Family at Red Roofs, Those Dreadful Children, The Put-em-Rights and so on. Each of these showed children learning (often the hard way) about responsibility, consequences, respect,  justice and other moral issues.

I’ve gone over this review a few times now and can’t seem to put into words how great these books are – not without outlining multiple scenes and spoiling the story anyway. I wish I had read them as a child as I’m sure revisiting them would be as rewarding as rereading my favourite Famous Fives.

A note of caution: I am aware of some criticisms of these books regarding the portrayal of the Native American characters. I don’t have the right to say that indigenous Americans should or shouldn’t be offended by these books. All I can say is that although Little Bear may seem somewhat stereotypical to begin with (There’s an interesting article about his speech here) and that Reid Banks may have included some inaccuracies regarding specific Native American details, the book delves quite deeply into a lot of issues in a positive way.

I’ll leave a couple of articles I’ve read on the subject here, one positive and one negative so you can be more informed.

 

Posted in Book reviews | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

January 2021 Round Up

Posted on February 3, 2021 by Fiona

That’s the first month of the long-awaited 2021 over, and to be honest, it wasn’t any better than much of 2020, was it.

What I have read

I set myself a target of 100 books for 2021 and then proceeded to ease myself in slowly, mostly reading easy children’s book as I didn’t feel motivated to read much else what with the new lockdown restrictions and rubbish weather. Thinking back to my stats for last year, my stats for this month are heavily tilted towards both rereads and children’s books. I did read a couple of new grown-up books at the end of the month though!

  • The Return of the Indian (The Indian in the Cupboard #2) – Lynne Reid Banks
  • The Girls of Mulberry Lane (Mulberry Lane #1) – Rosie Clarke
  • Anastasia Krupnik (Anastasia Krupnik #1) – Lois Lowry
  • Anastasia Again (Anastasia Krupnik #2) – Lois Lowry
  • Anastasia At Your Service (Anastasia Krupnik #3) – Lois Lowry
  • Clanlands – Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish
  • Anastasia Ask Your Analyst (Anastasia Krupnik #4) – Lois Lowry
  • K is for Killer (Kinsey Millhone #11) – Sue Grafton
  • Anastasia on Her Own (Anastasia Krupnik #5) – Lois Lowry
  • The Secret of the Indian (The Indian in the Cupboard #3) – Lynne Reid Banks
  • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
  • Anastasia Has the Answers (Anastasia Krupnik #6) – Lois Lowry
  • The Radium Girls – Kate Moore
  • Dead Man in Ditch (The Fetch Phillips Archives #2) – Luke Arnold

And I’m still working my way through:

  • L is for Lawless (Kinsey Millhone #12) – Sue Grafton

What I have watched

  • Hollyoaks, as usual.
  • More Mythbusters, Only Connect and Taskmaster, plus the odd episode of The Crown.
  • Some films with Brodie which include A Bug’s Life, Paddington 2, Toy Story 4, Peter Pan, The Incredibles, Hotel Transylvania and Hotel Transylvania 2, The Spongebob Movie: Sponge on the Run and Bee Movie.
  • The Big Fat Quiz of the Year – for once I did better on current affairs (and even sport!) than entertainment.
  • The second series of Dream Home Makeover (I can’t understand why I like this when they’re tone-deaf enough to genuinely think they have customers on a ‘limited’ budget, who are spending $30,000 for redecorating and furnishing a single room.)
  • Tattoo Fixers and Tattoo Fixers on Holiday
  • After reading Clanlands I was in the mood for Outlander so I started back at at season one.
  • Wandavision, the new Marvel show which is on Disney+

What I have done

  • The very hard jigsaw of the Marauder’s Map which I got for Christmas
  • Many wet and cold walks and trips to various parks
  • Some home-baking, Brodie and I have made no-sugar blueberry scones, banana bread and porridge bars. 
  • Played in the snow as it snowed twice in January
  • Had a few ‘special’ teas where we set the table and ate together – steak pie on New Year’s Day and a veggie haggis potato pie on Burns’ night. We also ordered pizza one night, Brodie’s first delivery!

I also spent far too long trying to solve this puzzle from one of the magazines, and in the end sent a photo to my family who were equally baffled. Then finally, a few hours later my dad solved it (he’s the crossword-er in our family).

Let’s see if any of you can solve it? 

 

If you get it, just say so in the co

What has your month looked like?

Posted in Personal Experiences | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Monday #409

Posted on February 1, 2021 by Fiona

I was going to say ‘we’re at the end of January’ but I now realise it will be the start of February when this is published. It has probably been a miserable month for a lot of us; cold and dark and pretty lonely with the tight lockdown restrictions in the UK. But, January is over! Now onto February which is inevitably just as cold (if not colder) than January, but even so, it’s a step closer to spring and the hope that the vaccine roll out will mean an easing of restrictions.

In other news, Stef and I are still working on our next Cunningham and Petrov story. We are halfway through chapter 5 at the moment, where David has just returned to the Evans’ farm with the donkeys trailing after him. I don’t know yet how many chapters it will run to, the last one was meant to be 9, then 12, then ended up being 25 (sort of like how the Famous Five series was meant to be 6, then 12, then 21, but rather than children clamouring for more, it’s just that we cannot be succinct apparently!) so we will hold back on starting to publish it for a wee bit longer.

January round up

and

If you like Blyton: The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks

“Slithery dithery, musty fusty dusty,” said Kiki, trying to remember the various collections of words she had picked up at one time or another. “Huffin and Puffin.”

Kiki shows off her perhaps irritating intellect in The Mountain of Adventure. She’s actually very like a toddler, if you think about it. Likes rhyming words and repeating things, talks a lot of nonsense, makes a lot of noises, is very loud…

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

On my bookshelf part 7

Posted on January 29, 2021 by Fiona

A while back I gave you detailed tours of my main bookcases. First up were my Blytons in parts one, two and three, Blyton and Malcolm Saville in part four, miscellaneous children’s books in part five and my collection of grown-up books (and more children’s books) in part six.

And now we are on part 7. How many more bookshelves do I have, I hear you ask. Well, if we ignore the stacks of books in my wardrobe (primarily Nancy Drews, Buffy and Angels, Point Horror and Crime) there are a couple in Brodie’s room.

He has a unit in the living room with a load of toddler-appropriate books, and a unit in his bedroom, plus two shelves on the bookcase in there. But near the top of the bookcase are two shelves full of my books. (The middle shelf holds his trousers, don’t ask.)

Most of these books are in his room under the pretence that I am keeping them there for him when he grows up. Really I just don’t want to part with them and don’t have room anywhere else… But if he wants to read them later then that’s fine!

The Blyton overflow

Starting at the left are The Amelia Jane Bumper Book and the Noddy Classic Treasury which I used as my modern copy to compare older texts to.

Then a couple of non-Blytons, The First Margaret Mahy Story Book and Centuries of Stories.

Then there’s a boxset of the first three Adventure Series books (obviously I have these in hardback but I was given these at some point and they’re too nice to chuck).

Next, some Dean editions of Tales of Long Ago, Stories for You and Tales of Brave Adventure. These were once my mum’s, but as they’re Deans they’re relegated to the spare room. I have a bit of an irrational dislike of Dean editions, partly as they try to pass themselves off as first editions far too often! There’s also a World Distributors Now For a Story – a 1960s reprint of an earlier book.

After that are two of the Hodder Short story collections, the only two out of the 20 or so that exist – Christmas Stories and Christmas Tales, and All Aboard which is an omnibus of some of the Caravan Family stories.

Then a hardback of Five Have a Mystery to Solve, there because I bought a first edition a while ago so this one is surplus, a paperback of The Folk of the Faraway Tree, five duplicates of Noddy titles, a paperback of The Enchanted Wood (which I should do a text comparison on), another duplicate Famous Five, this time Five Run Away Together, two more Noddy duplicates in paperback, and my Red Fox paperback of Five Have a Puzzling Time and other stories. (And yes, writing that out makes me realise I really need to reorganise those to put like with like, but I’m not willing to wake Brodie to do it right now).

The pig bankie contains various foreign coins as I went though a phase of collecting them (without ever leaving the country!), the bear one is empty but I’ve had it since I was a baby, and beside those is where we keep Brodie’s dummies so he can’t reach them.

The other children’s books

This is a total mishmash of things. Some I’ve read and don’t want to part with, but quite a lot are waiting for me to get around to reading them!

On the far left is The Velveteen Rabbit, The King the Mice and the Cheese (a very Dr Seuss-ish story but by Nancy and Eric Gurney), Gobbolino the Witches’ Cat by Ursula Moray Williams, four of Beatrix Potters’ Peter Rabbit tales, an omnibus of The Spiderwick Chronicles, Find the Phantom of Ghastly Castle (a puzzle book full of pencil notations, which I remember my dad helping me with and I’m still not sure we managed to solve it…), four Tashi and the Ghosts books. Then there’s three of the Princess Diaries books, Ella Enchanted and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry (I should have handed this back as it was a school copy…) Charlotte’s Web, some Jacqueline Wilsons and Ramona Quimby books, and War Game by Michael Foreman (I have War Boy and After the War is Over in hardback on the bottom shelf).

Stuart Little, Dirty Gertie Mackintosh (silly poems), The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler, The Demon Headmaster (the first in the series), Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories, four Gemma novels by Noel Streatfeild, The Family from One End Street, The Arbradizil (actually this one is Ewan’s, one of the only children’s books he still has!), Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, Madame Doubtfire (enjoyable but quite different from the film which I absolutely love… “It was a run-by fruiting!”), The Haunted Island, and two of the sequels to The Animals of Farthing Wood.

The slim volumes are mostly Ladybird classics, several dating from the 1960s, the last one is The Cabinet of Calamari, a short novelisation of an episode of The Real Ghostbusters TV cartoon (I knew of the cartoon long before the films, and was rather in love with cartoon Egon as a child. I was very disappointed when movie Egon didn’t have this ludicrous hair.)

The last book is The Tales of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter.

And this concludes the tour of my bookshelves!

Posted in Personal Experiences, Purchases, Reading Recommendations | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

(One to avoid) if you like Blyton: The New Bobbsey Twins #22 The Super-Duper Cookie Caper

Posted on January 27, 2021 by worldofblyton

We are heading in a slightly different direction with this review; the first Bobbsey Twins post was an overview of the 1980s Wanderer series, which Sean followed with reviews of two of the New Bobbsey Twins books; The Secret of Jungle Park and The Case of the Close Encounter.

All these posts came under the banner of ‘If you like Blyton’, and were recommendations. This one is different as Sean chose it to highlight how different the latter books of this series are.

With Blyton a few of her series show a decline in quality towards the end. Most people agree that the final Famous Five book (Five Are Together Again) is the weakest. I personally find the second-last book (Five Have a Mystery to Solve) rather weak too, but there is a variety of opinions as to which point the series declined. Some people think everything after book 12 was poor, others think there are some highlights in the second half – but few can agree upon exactly which books were the high points!

The final Five Find-Outers book (The Mystery of Banshee Towers) is the weakest according to most readers, the final Secret Seven has several inconsistencies and is not amongst the best entries.

But Enid Blyton was a single author who, as she aged, found her health and memory declining. Her stand alone titles towards the end of her career also declined in quality, and so it wasn’t as simple as each series declining, but her general work declining from around 1960 onwards.

The Bobbsey Twins were written by ghost-writers from the Stratmeyer Syndicate, and while it’s possible one ghost-writer’s writing quality declined as the series went on it is unlikely, as the beauty of ghost-writers are you can replace one with another and your readers are none the wiser. From reading Sean’s review it looks more like someone in the Syndicate decided to take the series in a slightly different direction, a direction I’ll let his review explain to you.

This could still be considered an ‘if you like Blyton’ post, but only if it come after ‘one to avoid!’.

The Super-Duper Cookie Caper

Warning: Spoilers and snide comments to follow!

Ok, so here is my review on one of my least favourite Bobbsey books. For those of you that missed my earlier reviews, the New Bobbsey Twins series is a collection of 30 books written in the late ’80s and early ’90s starting the Bobbsey Twins as they solve puzzling conundrums.

The first 17 books of the series have the twins solving big mysteries including industrial spies, theft of secret government aircraft, a troubling theft on the set of a Hollywood movie, and other crimes that really sparked my tween imagination! The latter 13 books really lessened the stakes with such “crimes” as mischief at the science fair, a missing pig at the county fair, hijinks at sleepaway camp, and this gem-the mysterious disappearance of a cookie recipe!

In all fairness, maybe the publishers thought that they wanted to change the pace of the stories and have them involve things that kids would realistically be expected to encounter (after all, how many youngsters solve real crimes before they enter their teens?) However, the change was abrupt, and it was made at the worst time for me. The series lasted from 1987 to 1992, so I was 12 when it started, and about 17 when it finished. The books were written for what I would think would be ages 12-14 at first, and by 1990 when the change was made, I was in my mid-teens, and really wasn’t the age group they were aiming for.

Ok, backstory over-let’s get into this book:

It starts with Freddie (the 6 year old younger boy twin) wanting a bicycle. He decides to earn the money for it by selling chocolate cookies on weekends using his grandmother’s secret recipe. He enlists the help of his twin Flossie, (and their housekeeper Mrs Green helps with the oven baking), and they start selling cookies at the park on weekends. It starts off with them doing very well in sales, but alas-trouble rears its head! First, a mysterious stranger with flour on him buys a cookie and says they are just “all right”, one of their classmates decides to sell brownies, and Danny Rugg (the neighbourhood bully) makes trouble!

Older twins Bert and Nan  (they are 12) suggest they put up flyers and go door to door with samples so they can take orders and get a jump on the brownie baking classmate. This works, and they do get quite a few orders for cookies. The next day, the four twins are in the kitchen baking, but they begin to get overwhelmed, burning a whole batch! What’s worse, the secret recipe goes missing! Was it stolen? Freddie suspects Brian (the kid selling brownies), especially after he says he is going to start selling cookies too!

Now, I know I complained about the lessening of the stakes, but I really do feel for Freddie at this point as he worries about getting his bicycle, and he is getting pretty stressed about the recipe being missing (the twins try to recreate it to bake more cookies, but they don’t turn out right).

More bad and suspicious things start happening. The man who had flour on his clothes came back to the park, and saw not only Freddie and Flossie selling cookies, but Brian selling brownies, and he got quite upset! Also, the older twins discover that the flyers they’ve been hanging up around the neighbourhood start mysteriously disappearing! Curiouser and curiouser as the saying goes!  Bert and Nan follow the mystery man and discover that he owns a bakery, but they also clear him of the theft.

Freddie, meanwhile has a faux conversation in front of Brian, Danny, and some other kids saying that the next weekend, their grandmother is giving them another recipe-this one is to a super duper cookie like no other! The four go to the grocery store to put an assortment of ingredients in a cart thinking that they will catch one of the suspects with those same
ingredients in his cart. Turns out the recipe swiper was one of the neighbours who placed an order! She wanted to sell them at her husband’s newspaper, and she stole the recipe because she is such a terrible cook. (I’m not kidding, that was the plot!)

Like I said, the latter part of the series uses a different artist, and a different genre of mystery. I can’t recommend it

Never fear, Bobbsey fans! Next time, I’ll go back to a favourite story of the New Bobbsey Twins!

Posted in Book reviews | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Monday #408

Posted on January 25, 2021 by Fiona

It’s another Monday but it doesn’t seem like we are getting any closer to the end of this particular lock down. Still, there’s hope somewhere ahead, even if it’s further away than we thought it would be as we celebrated the end of the disaster that was 2020.

Today is also Burn’s Night in Scotland which means it’s (veggie) haggis for tea tonight. I plan to turn it into a ‘pie’ with mashed potato on top and roasted parsnips on the side.

Here are a few words from Burns which seem appropriate for the times:

The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft a-gley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain
For promis’d joy.

(Translation: The best-laid schemes of mice and men
Go oft awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!)

(One to avoid) if you like Blyton: The New Bobbsey Twins #22 The Super-Duper Cookie Caper

and

On my bookshelf part 7

“Wipe your feet!” screamed Kiki, and made a noise like a mowing-machine cutting long grass. It sounded really terrible in the still night air of the mountain-side.

The wolves started in fright. Then with one accord they all galloped away down the hillside into the night. Kiki shouted rude remarks after them.

Kiki makes herself useful again and scares off the ‘wolf’ pack in The Mountain of Adventure.

 

 

 

Posted in Blog talk | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Enid Blyton’s winters

Posted on January 22, 2021 by Fiona

Winter is firmly here in Scotland. It has been in minus figures most days for the past few weeks, not ideal when our only options for activities outside the house are the garden, walks and playparks. Going for a walk when it’s crisp and cold can be lovely, but it’s nicest when it’s a choice and not done simply because you’ll lose the plot if you stare at the same four walls (or your toddler’s epic mess) any longer.

Anyway, I like to post seasonal content, so here are a few things that Blyton wrote about winter. Maybe we can find a new appreciation for the season! I make no pretence that this is an exhaustive list, though, it’s just around a dozen things I noted down, there will be much more out there.

Nature-lovers’ Corners

We all know that Enid Blyton was big on nature, and despite winter seeming quite a barren month to those of us in the UK, she still found plenty to write about. I have to admit although I have a mild interest in animals and birds, I know very little about flowers and trees.

In volume 1 issue 19 of Enid Blyton’s Magazine Blyton says that this is the time of year to learn to know the evergreen trees and bushes. She adds that it’s quite clear which ones these are, as they’re the only one still with leaves (even I knew that!).

She also mentions the robins who, in winter put on their scarlet waistcoats… [and] now they look like proper little redbreasts!

Blyton begins by starting her Nature-lovers’ corner for December 9 1953 (volume 1 issue 20 of Enid Blyton’s Magazine) with a question.

What sort of a month will this turn out to be? Mild and fair with a few primroses opening their pale petals in sheltered corners? Or bitterly cold, with frost and snow, and all the ponds frozen?

Well, for me December 2020 was somewhere in-between, while January is firmly in frozen pond territory! (I read a lovely new story the other day about a 77 year old who went skating on an Edinburgh pond on her 50 year old skates!)

Blyton continues by reminding us that December 21st and 2nd are the shortest days of the year – though the days seem to be getting longer very slowly, and advising us to watch the stars at night and to try to catch some snowflakes to examine their shapes.

In volume 3 issue 23 of Enid Blyton’s magazine has Blyton giving us something for us to find

She suggests putting out a bird table (as this is from November it is to ‘tame’ the birds, it may be too late to do such a thing in January), and you may see at least nine different kinds of birds – blackbirds, thrush, starling, robin, sparrow, chaffinch, and two or three kinds of tit.

Blyton also suggests looking for spruce trees which have a straight spike at the top, and six-inch pine cones.

More things for us can be found in volume 3 issue 25 of Enid Blyton’s Magazine.

She advises looking at bird prints in the snow to see which birds hopped across it and which ran. Hopping birds’ prints will be side by side while running ones are one behind the other. Coincidentally I spotted some clear bird prints on my walk in between sessions of writing this blog! Some running and hopping ones, I think.

There are long Nature Notes for January in Enid Blyton’s Book of the Year.

It begins with As the day lengthens, the cold strengthens. I’m glad to see that it’s not just me imagining that January and February are colder than December!

She also says, though, that a cold January usually means a good spring, so here’s hoping! The notes are then divided into sections; birds, which are the usual suspects, trees, flowers (not many unless it’s very mild), animals (many still sleeping), insects (few apart from moths).

Poems

Trees in Winter (from Enid Blyton’s Magazine, volume 5 issue 25)

Elm and chestnut and beach and lime
Are bare and brown in the winter-time
Oak and sycamore, birch and plane,
Have hardly a leaf to catch the rain!
Ash and maple and poplar tall
Haven’t a leaf to show at all!

But holly and fir and cedar and pine
Stand up straight in a well-dressed line,
And juniper, privet, laurel and yew
Wear their leaves all the winter through!
Maybe they feel the cold and so
They never undress when the chill winds blow!

This rather reminds me of the poem used to remember which months have thirty or thirty one days – only useful if you can actually remember which order the names go in!

Cold Weather (from Enid Blyton’s Magazine, volume 1 issue 20)

The sky is grey, the wind is cold,
The hungry birds are tame and bold,
There’s ice beside the running river
Where the wagtails stand and shiver.
Frost climbs up each blade of grass,
And every puddle shines like glass;
The lane is powdered white with snow
And carefully the horses go
For fear they will slip; within the fold
The little lambs are safe from cold,
And when we breathe, our breath comes out
Like steam from any kettle-spout

The Robin (from the Water-Lily Story Book)

Here I am with chest puffed out
To keep away the cold,
Upon your sill I hope about,
A robin bright and bold

My eye is black, my chest is red,
I bob and flick and bend,
Oh haven’t you a mite of bread
To throw your little friend?

Jack Frost (From Enid Blyton’s Book of the Year)

Every little twig of brown
He lightly powders up and down,
Every blade of grass is bright
With tiny crystals, dazzling white;
On the spider threads he grows
Frosty beads in shining rows,
Changing into fairy lace
All the webs in every place!
He sits upon our window-sill
And paints with rare and loving skill
Leaf and frond in rich design
On your window-pane and mine.
Silently he comes and goes,
Unseen as the wind that blows.
Leaving loveliness behind
For our eyes to seek and find.

Snow (from Enid Blyton’s Book of the Year)

Nothing is so quiet as the snow;
It falls from out a leaden sky
Upon the wintry ground to lie
Without a murmur, silently and slow.

Like a fleecy blanket, softly spread
Upon each sleeping field and hill,
It shelters them in warmth until
They stir and rouse within their wintry bed

Then silent as it came, the dazzling snow
As silent goes, within a night;
And here and there the snowdrops white
Put up their heads, and sweetly nod and blow.

I actually like it when it snows; at first at least. It looks lovely and playing in it can be fun, but it becomes tiresome when it inevitably freezes and it becomes treacherous to walk anywhere.

Short stories

Jack Frost features heavily in the stories I found.

Who could it be? (Enid Blyton’s Magazine, volume 3 issue 25)

One winter afternoon Sam and Valerie walk home on frosty grass that sounds like toast as it crunches under their feet. Valerie comments how lovely everything looks, and how she’d like to paint it, and then they spot a small man, rather thin who is doing just that, but when he sees them he runs off with his easel.

Sam picks up a sketch book the man has dropped and it is full of detailed drawings of ferns, over and over, so rather dull. But then the last pages are full of what the children realise are snow crystals. The book is signed by a JF, and they can’t work out who that could be.

That night is very cold and when they wake up the next morning their windows are covered in the same snow crystal pattern as the last pages of the book. Then they realise who JF is – Jack Frost!

Jack Frost is About (From the Foxglove Story Book)

When Jean’s mother tells her that it’s Jack Frost that brings the cold weather Jean goes outside and shouts out that she doesn’t really believe in him, but he shouts back! She responds how she doesn’t like how he kills plants and makes everything cold.

They then have a conversation where he defends himself and says he will prove to her that he is real – and he does so by drawing on her windows that night.

Jack Frost is About (Brownie’s Magic p 49)

This series of books is slightly odd as although they look like a standard Blytonian collection of short stories each is a nature lesson hidden in a story. They are almost fiction and non-fiction at the same time.

This story teaches children how deciduous trees are not dead in the winter, as they all have little buds containing leaves which will begin to grow again in the spring. This is achieved by having Jack Frost boasting about how he’s killed the trees and an owl correcting him, and showing him how it is the trees are alive.

Jack Frost the Painter (from the Daffodil Story Book)

This one I don’t have a copy of, I have the Daffodil Story Book but it’s a later reprint which is unfortunately heavily abridged.

Whole Book

Blyton also wrote a whole book about winter – the Round the Year with Enid Blyton series has a book for each season.

The winter book is split into 10 chapters:

  1. How things make ready for the winter
  2. The story of frost and snow
  3. The creeping snail
  4. Making friends with the birds
  5. The compass
  6. Our evergreens
  7. The robin and the wren
  8. Foot-writing in the snow
  9. Twigs and their story
  10. The friendly tits

Most of these chapter headings are fairly self-explanatory. The snail chapter also covers slugs though I’m not sure how related to winter it is, other than to say that snails close over their shells during cold snaps. The compass is similarly unrelated to winter, but I expect Blyton had a list of topics she wanted to cover and the compass is no less related to winter than any other season!

Twigs and their story covers the same information as in Jack Frost is About, but in more detail.

Each chapter also has a few ideas of things to do related to the subject of the chapter.

There’s too much in the book to really go into any detail here but maybe I’ll review it soon (or next year if I run out of time this winter!)

There is also Winter Stories, one of the newer Hodder short story collections. You can see the contents here, and although many of the titles don’t sound wintry I assume they are at least set in the winter.

 

Further reading

A few years ago Stef pulled together a couple of lists of Christmas and winter-themed books, if you are in the mood for your books to match the weather outside. Part one is here and part two, here.

 

Posted in Seasonal | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Letters to Enid 23: From volume 2 issue 11

Posted on January 20, 2021 by Fiona

It has been a long time since I last did a letters to Enid post. To tell the truth I am missing volume 2 issues 14 and 15 and have been wary of doing more posts and then running out of consecutive issues! I have been trying my best to source those missing ones but with no luck so far. Anyway, I decided I might as well do issues 11-13 while still hunting.

If anyone has those volumes and could send me a scan or photo of the letters page(s) I’d be eternally grateful!

Previous letters pages can be found here.

Letters page from Volume 2, issue 11. May 26th – June 8th, 1954.

OUR

LETTER PAGE

 A letter from Jennifer Snell, 183 Broad Lane, Coventry.
Dear Enid Blyton,
One Sunday, we were having our dinner when Daddy had a phone-call telling him that some monkeys had escaped from a circus, so he went to see if he could find any, and took us with him. While Daddy was talking to some people we suddenly saw two of the monkeys up a tree, and we coaxed them down with an orange. It must have been a surprise to passers-by to see 13 or 14 monkeys looking down at them!
Love from
Jennifer Snell.

(What an adventure, Jennifer! I shall have to put your monkeys into a story!)

A letter from Maureen Ainslie, aged six, 5 Market Road, Chirnside, Berwicks.
Dear Enid Blyton,
The kitten in your book “The Laughing Kitten” is exactly the same as my Sally, and when I let her see the picture she started to purr!
With much love from
Maureen

(She must be a darling if she is like the “Laughing Kitten”, Maureen!)

A letter from  Patrick Armstrong, St. Mark’s Vicarage, Newnham, Cambridge.
Dear Enid Blyton,
I like our magazine very much, especially “The Children at Green Meadows,” as I am a Scout. I am interested in Nature, so I am fond of the Nature-lovers’ Corners. These I cut out and colour and mount in an exercise book – and then I have my own Nature Book!
Yours,
Peter Armstrong.

(I pass on your excellent idea to other Nature-lovers, Peter. Thank you!)

A letter from  Shirley Allen, 65 Prote Mateje, Belgrade.
Dear Enid Blyton,
This is an International School, and we have children from eleven different countries. They all like your magazine very much. I had a sale of comics and magazines at school and I raised £1 7s. od. for the Sunbeams; please forward it for me.
Yours,
Shirley Allen.

(Thank you, Shirley. I was interested to hear about your school. Give the children out best wishes, please.)

Two more unusual letters this time – one from a boy and one from outside of the UK.

I love that Enid chooses such mundane letters such as ‘I have a kitten like one in your book’ because these things are so important to little children. At the same time it’s also nice to read the more exciting letters about escaped circus monkeys! Can anyone think of any stories that she might have based on Jennifer’s letter?

Posted in Magazines | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Monday #407

Posted on January 18, 2021 by Fiona

Just a reminder that fan fic Fridays are on hold for the meantime as we work on the next instalment of Cunningham and Petrov.

Letters to Enid #23

and

Enid Blyton’s winters

“In the winter she curls up around a good book and dreams away the cold.”

Effra, the genius loci of the River Effra, talking about Sky the woodnymph in Ben Aaronovitch’s Broken Homes of the Rivers of London series.

Posted in Blog talk | Tagged , | Leave a comment

2020 birthday and Christmas present round up

Posted on January 15, 2021 by Fiona

I’m lucky to have friends and family who know about (if not understand) my love for all things Blyton, and who buy me Blyton-related things for birthdays and Christmases. Here’s my 2020 haul!

Corfe castle goodies from Stef’s trip to, well, Corfe Castle. There were a range of postcards including a wooden one, a magnet and a really teeny yet challenging jigsaw with castle-shaped pieces.

Some of the postcards have already found homes on my bit of wall where I already had some Blyton-y post cards, and on my bookshelf (not in front of my Famous Fives, though, that space is reserved for my two sets of Pepys playing cards and my Sindy-dog Timmy.)

I should have included something for scale, but here’s the jigsaw with its ‘whimsy’ pieces which are a hallmark of Wentworth puzzles. Put together it’s around the size of a small postcard.

A nice hardback copy of Enid Blyton and her Enchantment with Dorset by Andrew Norman.

A ‘lashing of ginger beer’ pin and Blytonian phrases tea-towel, sold by the folk who do an improvised Blyton comedy show.

The Island of Adventure adaptation from 1982 on DVD, with Norman Bowler as Bill – look out for a review of this some time this year!

Darrell and Friends by Narinder Dhami. This is a surprisingly thick book!

Poster sold as a “Great Vintage Illustration of Famous Five Annual of 1979”  but is in fact the 2014 annual cover with 1979 added (with not very much skill!). All very odd. Obviously the person who bought me this just assumed it was exactly what it said, a 1979 annual. It’s still attractive as long as you don’t look too closely at the copy-paste job clearly done in Paint!

And as a bonus, I bought Stef a nice Malory Towers mug and when it arrived the handle was in six pieces. I got to keep the broken mug while the seller sent a new one directly to Stef. It’s not much good for drinking out of (not that I drink tea or coffee anyway) so I have put it on my dressing table to hold bits and pieces.

Did you get anything Blytonian this year?

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

My 2020 in books and Blyton

Posted on January 13, 2021 by Fiona

Last year I did a sort of round up of my year in books, so I thought I’d do the same again this year.

Every year I set some reading goals. The main one is how many books – I generally start with a goal of 100 and if if I hit that early I’ll increase it, and I also have some looser goals that I don’t put actual numbers on.

Goal: read at least 100 books

What with the lockdown keeping me off work for over seven months I had a bit more reading time on my hands, so I hit 100 books in July. At that point I upped my goal to 150 and in the end read 166, so you can see that my reading slowed down in the second half of the year.

Goal: Read more new books than rereads

I definitely achieved this one – I read 115 new books and reread 51. I absolutely love revisiting old favourites, or books I enjoyed but can no longer remember the details of, so I definitely don’t think there’s anything wrong in the slightest with rereading. I just know that given the choice I’d sit and reread so many books that I’d not have time to read anything new, and there are so many wonderful books out there waiting for me to discover them.

The rereads

These were mostly books from a couple of different series that I have been reading for the second (or third!) time.

I read the whole of The Chronicles of St Mary’s by Jodi Taylor so that was 26 I’d already read (and four new ones), plus the Frogmorton Farm series also by Jodi Taylor, which was three rereads and one new book.

I also continued reading the Undead series by MaryJanice Davidson, so I reread seven of those and four later ones I hadn’t read the last time.

I had planned to carry on my reread of the Buffy books but only managed two (of a trilogy no less).

I also reread a few Blytons but I’ll come to those later!

The new books (and authors)

Out of interest, I counted 69 different authors on my list of books read this year (I’ve never counted that before so I don’t know how that compares to other years, but maybe this year I’ll aim to read 70 or more different authors!) and a whopping 40 of them were brand-new to me.

In the past few years I’ve found Diana Gabaldon and her Outlander books and Jasper Fforde and his Thursday Next series, neither of which have had anything new published since then! This year I discovered a couple of new authors that I love – firstly Ben Aaronovitch whose Rivers of London series (12 books not including the graphic novels) I devoured during lockdown, and Jemma Hatt who writes children’s adventure books (more on those later).

Other new books came from long-standing favourite authors like Ann M Martin (I got through 19 Babysitters Club books that I’d never read before – there are over 150 of them!), Sophie Kinsella, Donna Douglas, Jacqueline Wilson and Jean Fullerton.

Goal: Read some books I’ve always meant to

I’ve got many many lists of books I’d like to read. I always intend to read some more ‘classics’ and books that have films I like based on them. I also note down lots of books that appear on all those ‘100 books to be well-read’ lists.

And yet I find myself never getting around to these books. Some of them are intimidating, others I just worry I’ll end up disappointed. Hence the deliberate goal to motivate me.

The classics

Last year I started Jane Eyre and this year I eventually finished it. I pretty much hated it, but I read it.

I also read what you’d probably consider a ‘modern classic’ – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Sparks. I’m not sure how I felt about this – I didn’t exactly love reading it but it’s definitely stuck with me.

I’ll also include a children’s classic just to make myself feel even more accomplished – Five Children and it by E Nesbit.

The books made into films

Any time I enjoy a film and discover it was based on a book I want to read that book to see how the story ‘should’ have gone. I know a lot of people can’t read a book after seeing a film, or TV series but I love it. Equally I’m always keen to see film or TV adaptations of books I’ve enjoyed (I read the Hetty Feather books by Jacqueline Wilson this year and plan to watch the TV series at some point).

Anyway, technically Five Children and It ticks this goal, as does James and the Giant Peach, but I didn’t really read them with their films in mind.

What I think genuinely count are Jaws by Peter Benchley (Jaws is one of my all-time favourite films so I’m glad I enjoyed the book), The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Banks-Reid which I can’t wait to re-watch, and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (every bit as good as the film).

Books on all those ‘must read’ lists

I think I’ve already mentioned most of the ones that would count for this – Jane Eyre, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Jaws. I think I wanted to do a lot of comfort reading this year so I didn’t push myself too much.

Goal: Find a good balance between books for children’s and books for grown ups

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with reading children’s books as a grown up. I wouldn’t be running a blog about a children’s author if I did! Saying that, I think for me it’s important to broaden my horizons a bit and read books that challenge me.

I don’t put a number on this goal but I aim to read more grown up books than ones for children. I read 104 books for grown ups, 56 for children and six that I think sit in the strange zone of teen/young adult books.

I think I’ve mentioned a lot of what made up my children’s books, The Baby-Sitters’ Club, Hetty Feather, Jemma Hatt’s Adventurers, The Indian in the Cupboard, Five Children and It and a few Blytons. There were a few picture books I picked up while covering in the children’s department at work as well.

Goal: Read more feministly

This is a totally new goal, stemming from the beginning of the year when I read Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez. I hadn’t chosen to read it with any great feminist plan in mind, I just thought it sounded interesting. (If you aren’t aware of it, it’s about how women are generally excluded from research, planning and design across the board leading to drugs that haven’t been tested on women, phones too big for the average woman’s hand and seatbelts that have been tested for people with the height, weight and mass of the average man, amongst many other things.)

That sparked my interested in feminist works – though my definition of feminist books is fairly wide.

After Invisible Women I read

  • Lady Killers: Deadly Women Through History by Toni Telfer. This looks at female serial killers, a title usually associated with men, and examines these women from a perspective beyond the usual clichés of ‘mad’ or ‘hysterical’ females.
  • Misjustice: How British Law is Failing Women by Helena Kennedy. As the title suggests this examines discrimination against women in the legal system (both in opportunities for female lawyers and judges as well as the way females are treated as offenders and victims).
  • Feminism: Ideas in Profile by Deborah Cameron. I found this quite dry, it outlines the different types of feminism, looks at its history and touches on the main areas of life that feminism is concerned with.
  • Warriors and Witches and Damn Rebel Bitches by Mairi Kidd. This is more light-hearted, and comes under my feminism banner as it explores some of Scotland’s inspirational women who have largely been forgotten (or ignored, as most history has been written by men…).
  • Gender Rebels: 50 Influential Cross-Dressers, Impersonators, Name-Changers, and Game-Changers by Anneka Harry. I haven’t actually finished this as it’s pretty dire – the author has her own brand of humour and slang and it’s extremely cringe-worthy at times as she describes strong historical women as as chipper as a deep-fried potato, or more precarious than a sedated flamingo on a Segway. 

I have over 30 books I want to read on this topic but I lost momentum when my library closed due to the pandemic. I will definitely keep going with it in 2021, though.

How did the pandemic affect my reading?

I think the pandemic has affected my reading in lots of small ways.

First, with no work to go to and nowhere else to be, it gave me more time so I read more.

As I’ve said above somewhere, this year has made me reach for more comforting books rather than challenging myself, and it changed my access to books with my library being shut.

Normally I borrow loads, and find lots of inspiration as books are returned, tidied or put on display. I didn’t do a count last year but this year I worked out how many physical books I read as compared to audiobooks and ebooks. I suspect normally its skewed towards physical books, but this year I read far more ebooks.

In fact I read 73 ebooks, 51 physical books and 42 audiobooks (not including the Harry Potter ones which I listen to every night as I fall asleep and probably get through a few times each per year). Not that I think that the format really matters – a book is a book no matter how you absorb the words.

And finally, my Blytons

Well, this is what you’re here for, isn’t it?

For someone who writes a blog about Blyton I actually read shamefully few of her books every year! Last year I read five (all Famous Fives).

This year I also read five. Three Famous Fives (Five Have a Wonderful Time, Five Go Down to the Sea and Five on a Hike Together), The Naughtiest Girl in the School (which I was comparing the text of) and The Island of Adventure which I listened to on audiobook.

It’s strange as normally I would have reached for Blytons as comfort reads but I think I found their idyllic travels a bit hard to stomach while I was trapped at home. I also feel like if I read them I have to review them which means taking notes and so on, and that can sometimes spoil some of the enjoyment for me.

I did read some Blyton-related things, though.

I read three of the Naughtiest Girl continuations by Anne Digby (The Naughtiest Girl Keeps a Secret, The Naughtiest Girl Helps a Friend and The Naughtiest Girl Saves the Day. They were all pretty awful, unfortunately.

I also read three books that come under our If You Like Blyton banner (well, I probably read a few more than that, but three that I actually got around to reviewing!). Those were the Adventurers books by Jemma Hatt – The Adventurers and the Cursed Castle, Temple of Treasure and City of Secrets.

What did your 2020 in books look like?

 

Posted in Personal Experiences | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Monday #406

Posted on January 11, 2021 by Fiona

We finished up our second Cunningham and Petrov story last week, and we are about to start work on the third which will take part during The Mountain of Adventure. I hope to start publishing it on Fridays in February to give us time to have a decent amount written first. Lately we’ve been finishing a chapter as late as Thursday night before a Friday morning publishing – and let me tell you, that’s not the best way to write a story!

My 2020 in books and Blyton

and

2020 Birthday and Christmas present round up

Alicia took it into her head to evolve a kind of demon-chant whenever she appeared or disappeared on the stage. She only thought of it a few minutes before rehearsal, and hadn’t time to tell Darrell or Sally, so she thought she would just introduce the weird little chant without warning.

And she did. She appeared with her sudden, surprising leaps, chanting eerily. ‘Oo-woo-la, woo-la, riminy-ree, oo-woo-la …’

Moira rapped loudly. The rehearsal stopped. ‘Alicia! What on earth’s that? It’s not in the script, as you very well know.’

Alicia causes chaos by suddenly ad-libbing lines for the pantomime in In the Fifth at Malory Towers. Later she threatens to quit the pantomime altogether, throwing Darrell into a panic as she can’t possibly rewrite all those scenes in three weeks!

This is a bit what it’s like writing fan fiction at the last-minute. Your characters suddenly try to go off in an entirely different direction, and you can’t let them because it would contradict what’s already been published and read!

Posted in Blog talk | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Fan fic Friday: Cunningham and Petrov: The Mystery of the Missing Agent epilogue

Posted on January 8, 2021 by Fiona

Last time Anatoly, Bentley and Thompson got their orders to collect Horace’s boat and return to the mainland.

cunningham and petrov

Chapter 25 – epilogue

As it happened, Anatoly did get his chance to pilot the boat. Bentley decided that if they took a shift each they could travel near enough without stopping in order to get back as quickly as possible.

Anatoly was given the nice, safe day shift, while Thompson took the late evening into the night and Bentley took the early morning hours. Between them they could travel 24 hours a day while only being at the wheel 8 hours each.

It was late on the third day by the time the convoy of boats arrived at the harbour they had departed from the week before. Thompson and Bentley moored their boat and then took hold of the rope towing the broken down vessel and pulled it into a free berth next to them, Anatoly throwing them a rope so they could tie it up too. As they were doing that, figures were making their way down to them along the pier.

“Ahoy,” came Henty’s voice first of all, though he passed them by on the stone harbour and went straight to check on his boat.

“It’s still in one piece!” Thompson shouted over his shoulder.

“So there you are, Cunningham,” Bentley said as he saw Bill standing ahead of them, Bennet by his side. “You led us on a bloody wild goose chase, you know.”

Bill was smoking his pipe and grinned wryly. “Think of it as a training exercise Bentley,” he said with a nod to the three returning men.

He paused, looked straight at Anatoly, and asked, “Bennett told me you worked out how I was in trouble. How did you work it out? I didn’t even get chance to send a message.”

“Just a feeling,” Anatoly said with an insouciant shrug. “You said there were suspicious planes, and I told you to stand by for further instructions. When I could not raise you again… Well. It is you and I know if anyone was to fall into trouble it would be you.”

Bill laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re too sharp, kiddo. You make a cracking agent, Petrov,” he said with a proud look on his face.

“Hey, less of the kiddo,” Anatoly grunted, swatting Bill away, though deep down he was thrilled at the praise.

“And what are we? Chopped liver?” Thompson demanded, though his earlier surliness had dissipated, and he was smiling as he spoke. “We’ve all been out for a week, knee-deep in bird excrement, searching for you!”

“And it looks good on you,” Bill laughed, going forward to shake hands with Thompson and Bentley. “Thank you, both of you.”

“Trust you to get picked up by a plane just as we were closing in on you,” Bentley said, rolling his eyes. “I swear we were this close,” he held his thumb and forefinger a fraction of an inch apart.

“Come along and tell me all about it in a proper briefing, instead of gossiping like a bunch of old fishwives,” Bennett ordered over the chatter.

They all nodded, and turned to head up off the jetty and into the room where they had had their original briefing a few days ago. Anatoly trailed at the back wondering when he would be able to talk to Bill one on one.

The briefing was short; the three men told the story of their search for Bill, outlining their reasoning behind their route and so on. They hadn’t come across any of the enemy, nor anything else of importance and so after around thirty minutes Bennett called an end to the proceedings. “Well, you did a good job. You were right on Cunningham’s trail, just a few days behind which you couldn’t do anything about. Why don’t you get something to eat and get some rest now? I’m still waiting on one of the other teams to come back in, once they arrive we’ll get ready to go back out and round up that nasty lot. They’ve been playing us for fools long enough.”

The lunch buffet was being set out when they got to the restaurant of the hotel the agents were staying in. Most agents honed in on the plates and would have loved to start digging in but they had to be careful as each of them had given their ration books to the hotel for the stay. The meat, chicken mostly, was portioned out, but at least the vegetables were more or less as much as they could eat. Anatoly filled his plate and went and sat at a small table out of the way, for some peace and quiet while the other agents got on eating and chatting noisily.

He looked up as someone approached his table. “Room for another one?” Bill asked, holding his own plate.

Anatoly nodded and sat back in his chair. “I thought you would want to sit in the thick of it?” he asked Bill after a moment, nodding to the larger group of agents at one of the bigger tables.

Bill shook his head as he put his plate down then pulled out a chair. “I’m going to smack someone if they make another joke about me needing rescued.”

“And what makes you think that I am not going to make jokes at your expense?” Anatoly asked as Bill settled himself across from him.

“You are the lowliest agent in the room,” Bill reminded him. “You wouldn’t dare be so cheeky to such a senior and well-respected agent such as myself,” he added, both of them knowing it was an absolute lie.

Anatoly smirked a little, “You know that is not true, Bill. I mean, you do seem to run into a lot of trouble with those children!”

“They are absolute magnets for trouble, those kids,” Bill agreed with a grin. “But they’ve all got sound heads on their shoulders and can take care of themselves, they’ve proved that time and time again.”

“I would never have gotten away with half of what they do! You would have boxed my ears,” laughed Anatoly. “But they do seem like they are sensible when they get into one of these messes!”

“I would have, and they are,” Bill said. There was a few minutes of quiet as they turned their attentions to their food.

“By the way, are you planning to return my pencil?” Bill asked suddenly. “I mark them for a reason, you know.”

Anatoly sat back and patted his pockets of his blazer for the pencil. He withdrew it from his inside pocket and handed it over. “Did you drop it on purpose?”

“I wish,” Bill said ruefully. “But no. I had no idea I’d need to leave any clues, they snuck up on me so damn quickly.”

“Well it is a good thing it was dropped then! Maybe we should make it our own signal for when I have to come find you again!” Anatoly said, half-joking.

Bill held the pencil stub up and gazed at it intently. “That’s not a bad idea. Not that I expect you’ll be hunting for me any time soon,” he added quickly. “But a quick code scratched on the side of a pencil… could be useful.”

Anatoly nodded. “Just handy to have a marker. Maybe I could have one as well so you can always come and find me!” he added with a smile

“You’d better come up with your own signal, then. The pencil’s mine!” Bill said cheerfully, sticking his pencil in his chest pocked and patting it.

“I’ll think of something and let you know,” Anatoly allowed.

“Are you joining us when we head back out?” he asked, changing the subject.

“I do not know, Bennett has not said anything. I would assume I was joining you.”

“Well, I’ll put you down for my team if you’re up for it?”

“Naturally,” he said with a grin. “If Bennett does not have other ideas. I do not think he likes me much.”

“You’re an unknown quantity,” Bill said tactfully. “He prefers agents he knows well. Give it a bit of time and he’ll like you about as much as he likes anyone.”

Anatoly smiled ruefully. “Hopefully I will get there,” he said. The men ate some of their lunch in silence before Anatoly remembered about the children. “What have you done with your young friends?” he asked Bill.

“I personally returned them to their mother,” Bill said with a slight wince as he remembered Allie’s face as the children had fallen over themselves to regale her with tales of their adventure, heedless of the trouble they were dropping him in. He couldn’t blame them, they had been raised to be honest and truthful. It would have been nice if they’d waited until he’d reached a safe distance before opening their mouths, though.

“Not a hugely pleasant experience?” asked Anatoly with a smirk, sitting back in his chair with his drink.

“She wasn’t best pleased,” Bill said. “She thinks I ought to have told her exactly why I was disappearing, I left it rather vague I’m afraid as she wasn’t feeling at all well that morning. I think she feels guilty for begging me to take the children off her hands, but she’s taken it out on me rather.”

“They are lucky children to have such a caring mother,” Anatoly said, a touch jealously. “I am sure she was just frightened and concerned.”

Bill grunted. “One of these days I shall have to bring her along on one of our trips so she can see that the children are perfectly capable of falling headlong into trouble with absolutely no help from me.”

Anatoly threw back his head and laughed. “I suppose you would say I was the same!”

“Absolutely.” Bill finished his food and sat back with a sigh. “Well, we’ll see if you avoid any trouble when we head out again later. Are you ready for some real action?”

“You bet I am!”

Well, that turned out to be a much longer story than either of us anticipated. Perhaps some day we will return to the islands of Scotland and write about the clean up operation, but for now, that’s the end of what Bill and Anatoly got up to during The Sea of Adventure.

Posted in Fan fiction | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

December 2020 round up

Posted on January 6, 2021 by Fiona

At long last we reached the last month of 2020.

What I have read

I have made an effort to finish things that have been languishing on my currently reading shelf for ages, and I succeeded with one of those, and made some progress on another. I also decided to read some Christmas books as usually by the time I think about it I’ve hardly got time – and I find it weird to read them after December 25!

I read 14 this month and that means I read 166 altogether. (It did say 168 but I discovered one book had managed to be logged as read three times on the same day…)

  • Baby-Sitter’s Christmas Chiller (Baby-Sitter’ Super Mystery #4) – Ann M Martin
  • The Fun of the Fifties: Ads, Fads and Fashion – Robert Opie
  • James and the Giant Peach – Roald Dahl (audiobook narrated by Julian Rhind-Tutt)
  • Pocketful of Dreams (East End Ration #1) – Jean Fullerton
  • A Ration Book Christmas (East End Ration #2) – Jean Fullerton
  • The 1950s Scrapbook – Robert Opie
  • Rivers of London: Bodywork – Ben Aaronovitch
  • Hetty Feather’s Christmas – Jacqueline Wilson
  • Christmas With the Teashop Girls (Teashop Girls #2) – Elaine Everest
  • Five Children and It (Five Children #1) – E Nesbit
  • The Missing Bookshop – Katie Clapham
  • Winning at Life (When #FML Means Family #2) – Kathryn Wallace
  • I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf – Grant Snider
  • The Ordeal of the Haunted Room (The Chronicles of St Mary’s #11.5) – Jodi Taylor

The ones I didn’t finish are:

  • Gender Rebels – Anneka Harry
  • The Girls of Mulberry Lane (Mulberry Lane #1) – Rosie Clarke

Though there are some others that I’m yet to finish but haven’t picked up in ages, the less said about those the better.

What I have watched

  • Hollyoaks 
  • More of Mythbusters, Only Connect, Taskmaster and Tattoo Fixers
  • We’ve continued with The Crown too (and I’ve done more reading on the royals!)
  • Mulan the live-action remake
  • Some Christmas things – Holiday Home Makeover with Mr Christmas, Jingle Jangle, The Christmas Chronicles (again as we had forgotten most of what happened) and Christmas Chronicles #2 which wasn’t as good, plus The Nightmare Before Christmas (breaking my rule and watching after Xmas)
  • Some movies to amuse Brodie on cold afternoons – Shaun the Sheep, Despicable Me and Treasure Planet. 
  • Can You Keep a Secret? This is based on the Sophie Kinsella book of the same name. I love the book and the film was OK but not particularly memorable.

What I have done

Not an awful lot considering the season!

  • We decided as a family that if we wanted to spend some time together during the five-day window that the rules were to be relaxed for, then we shouldn’t risk being ‘tracked and traced’ which meant no cafes or anything in the 14 days before December 23, and then they changed the rules but we still got together on Christmas day to exchange presents and have a meal.
  • We went hunting for fairy doors in the Botanic Gardens, and did a few other walks and trips to playparks too. 
  • Elf on the Shelf has visited us every day and Brodie has loved looking for him every evening after his bath (our Elf is obviously time-challenged as I know most elves are there first thing in the morning when everyone wakes up). 
  • I had my birthday and Brodie loved the cake
  • We took a wander in the city centre to see the Christmas tree and decorations and posted Brodie’s letter to Santa, then went in again on Christmas Eve and bought hot doughnuts and hot chocolate from a stall.
  • I helped Brodie make some reindeer Christmas cards and he helped me make lebkuchen. 
  • Had a very cold al fresco lunch at my parents’, even with the chiminea going it was freezing!
  • A scavenger hunt over Zoom which Brodie got really into; shouting “What’s next?” all the time and then running off to find the next item before it was even announced.

What I have bought

I bought myself some more issues of Enid Blyton’s Magazine from Sue Bell at Green Meadow Books.

What has your month looked like?

Posted in Personal Experiences | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Monday #405

Posted on January 4, 2021 by Fiona

Happy new year! We might be starting it off in a pretty bad place but at least there is hope for the rest of the year.

December round up

and

Cunningham and Petrov: The Mystery of the Missing Agent chapter 25

DEAR BOYS AND GIRLS,

A Happy New Year! It will be the first day of 1958 when you read this, but as I have to send this number of the magazine to the printers before Christmas, it’s not yet 1958 as I write to you. I hope you will have an interesting, happy and lucky Year – and that you have made some Good Resolutions! You know what my main one is – it’s always the same, very short and easy to remember. I hope some of you will make it your resolution too. It’s just – Be Kind!

Enid Blyton writes to her readers in the first magazine of volume 6 of Enid Blyton’s Magazine. I have no doubt that most Enid Blyton readers are kind – if they grew up reading her books they learned the importance of kindness, but given the situation the world is in right now kindness is definitely needed more than ever.

 

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

Fan fic Friday: Cunningham and Petrov: The Mystery of the Missing Agent chapter 24

Posted on January 1, 2021 by Fiona

Last time Bill and the children escaped the enemy only to end up with their boat caught on some rocks.

cunningham and petrov

Chapter 24

As the sun rose on Bill and the children a few miles away, Anatoly, Thompson and Bentley were waking up in their respective tents, ready for another day of searching the islands. They were fairly sure that this island was the island Bill and the children had been on. Anatoly was certain, but Bentley and Thompson chalked it up to youthful enthusiasm, anyone could have dropped a pencil. Still, after breakfast they performed one more sweep of the area near the natural harbour just in case they had missed anything.

Just as they were readying the boat for another day of sailing, the wireless crackled to life.

“Hey, you two, listen to this!” Bentley called, waving them over. “We’re being told to stand down.”

Anatoly and Thompson scrambled onto the boat in time to hear Bennett say “No response to our questions, but the message has been repeated every few minutes for the past hour.”

“Have they found Bill?” Anatoly asked.

Bentley nodded. “He is sending out a message saying he and four children are on a boat out of petrol, and a rough location, but they can’t seem to get a message back to him.”

Anatoly perched on the edge of the boat, a little disappointed that he hadn’t been able to find Bill and enact a daring rescue. He shook the thought from his head, having been told that it was a bad thing to think about when you were agent. Rescues were rarely glorious. Nine times out of ten, you were lucky to get rescued. They were only out for Bill as he was somewhat vital to the service. “Do we wait for further instructions?” Thompson was asking.

Bentley shrugged and asked the question across the wireless himself, receiving an affirmative response. After a hearty breakfast Bentley reported in to see if any instructions were waiting for them. “We’re to collect a boat,” he said, jotting down some co-ordinates on his notepad. “Bill and the children have been safely collected by sea-plane.”

“It is not Bill’s boat then?” Anatoly asked. “We know that got smashed up.” “Presumably the children found another boat somewhere,” Thompson said with a shrug. “Let’s do what we’re told and pack up here.”

“I was just told a boat. You know the rules, Petrov. They say ‘jump’ and you ask ‘how high’ not ‘why’,” Bentley said with a laugh. “Let’s get going sharpish, we’ve got a couple of days of sailing to get back to the mainland at least.”

Anatoly shared a smirk with Thompson as the cleared up what they had left on the island and packed the boat. Soon enough they were chugging along, to the co-ordinates that Bennet’s staff had provided from the mainland, and were astounded to see such a beautiful lagoon in the distance. “If you did not know where it was, you would not think to look here for someone hiding out would you?” Anatoly marvelled.

“No, it’s a damn good place for whatever they’re doing,” Bentley said. “We’d best not head too close, in case we draw attention to ourselves.” He consulted with Thompson who was keeping track of their position on the map and turned the boat a few degrees to the east. They headed the six miles south-east of the lagoon to the co-ordinates they had been given, and could just make out a small boat through their field-glasses, the tide having carried it away from its last-known location.

“Should I swim out and get it?” Anatoly suggested as they drew closer. “That would be the least conspicuous thing I am sure.” Thompson and Bentley glanced at each other. “It is an option, but we don’t know what condition it’s in,” Bentley said. “Let’s see if we can get any closer first before we throw you over the side!”

They took their boat closer and looked over the small craft. “It looks like it’s still seaworthy, and if Bill was on it last, it should be safe enough,” Bentley said. “I doubt the enemy would have come all the way out here just to plant some sort of trap on a useless boat.”

“I’ll bring us up close and one of you can hop over and fill up the tank and we can start heading back. We should have enough petrol for two boats, but if we start to run low we can switch to towing.”

Anatoly, wanting to be useful, was the one to go across to the other boat and soon he had it going. “You’ll have to take your turn at piloting on the way back,” Bentley told him. “We’ll sleep in shifts so that we don’t have to stop.”

The second boat was smaller and had a slightly smaller tank, but the fuel ran out long before any of them expected it to. “You put a whole can in, didn’t you?” Bentley asked Anatoly after they had turned back to see why he was no longer keeping pace with them.

“The tank must be leaking,” Thompson said. “There’s no way that boat has gone through a whole can of petrol while we’re still half-full.”

Bentley sighed. “Well, we can’t keep filling it up if it’s not going to last!”

“We’ll have to tow it in,” Thompson said. “We don’t have enough fuel to keep filling this one up, especially if it’s leaking.

“We could see if we can patch up the leak? ” suggested Anatoly hopefully.

“That would take too long,” Thompson said with a wry smile. “We’ll want to get back as soon as possible.”

That Anatoly couldn’t disagree with. Now the search was over there wasn’t any reason to hang around at sea. Back on the mainland plans would be being made to round up the gang and they wanted to be in on that. Still, he was disappointed not to have the chance to pilot a boat back some of the way.

to be continued…

Posted in Fan fiction | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

A guide to ‘If you like Blyton’ for grown-ups

Posted on December 30, 2020 by Fiona

A while back I compiled a list of all our reviewed authors that you might like if you like Blyton, but it focussed on children’s books. We also have some Blyton for grown-ups recommendations so I’m going to make a separate list of those below (which I will update if we review anything new).miln

Edmondson, Elizabeth

Recommended read: A Man of Some Repute

Elizabeth Edmondson is a pseudonym used by Elizabeth Pewsey, a writer or primarily romance novels. As Edmondson, however, she writes historical mysteries as well as young adult fantasy. A Man of Some Repute falls into the historical mysteries category, being set in the 1950s. It’s the first in a series of three books  and one novella about Hugo Hawksworth – a grown-up Julian Kirrin type – who solves Agatha Christie style murders in and around Selchester Castle.

Kelly, Stephen

Recommended read: The Language of the Dead

Stephen Kelly is also a historical mystery writer, The Language of the Dead is the first of three in his Inspector Lamb series. These are somewhat darker books as they deal with ‘brutal’ murders and as such as a further step than some cosier mysteries.

Milne, A.A.

Recommended read: The Red House Mystery

No, I haven’t made a mistake. You might well recommend A.A. Milne’s most famous works – those about that bear of very little brain, Winnie-the-Pooh – for fans of Blyton’s books, but he also authored a few books for grown ups. One of which is The Red House Mystery where a classic who-dun-it arises upon the murder of the host at a country estate.

Pascoe, Marina

Recommended read: Too Many Cooks

Marina Pascoe is another historical murder mystery writer. As well as some non-fiction works about the history of Cornwall, she has written four books in her Bartlett and Boase series which are set in 1920s Falmouth (her home town).

Sheridan, Sara

Recommended read: Brighton Belle

Continuing the theme with more historical mysteries, Sara Sheridan is the Scottish author of the Mirabelle Bevan series which has eight books so far. Set in 1950s Brighton, Mirabelle Bevan forms her own detective agency (a bold move for a woman at the time) and investigates cases of arson, theft, and several murders.

Tipping, Liz

Recommended read: Five Go Glamping

Liz Tipping is a romantic fiction writer who has written a modern story about four friends and their dog who go on a glamping (glamorous camping) holiday. Liz Tipping is an Enid Blyton fan so the book is s slight homage to the Famous Five.

Vincent, Bruno

Recommended read: Any title you can find cheaply (or better, for free!)

I deliberated over including Bruno Vincent here. He is the author of (so far) fifteen books in his Enid Blyton for Grown-Ups series, all of which feature the Famous Five as adults in the present day. I personally don’t find them very funny over-all, and neither does Stef but I feel like they deserve a mention if only for the lovely Ruth Palmer artwork. Some people seem to find them hilarious, so I can’t discount them entirely.

Posted in Other Authors | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments