Pretending to be Jack Trent

Posted on July 23, 2025 by Fiona

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

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

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

The photos that started it all

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

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

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

Tired arms in Hackley Bay

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

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

Pretending to be Philip Mannering for a moment

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

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

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

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

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

Back to Jack

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

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

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

Collieston

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

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

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

 

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Monday #639

Posted on July 21, 2025 by Fiona

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

Pretending to be Jack Trent

and

Reading the Circus of Adventure to Brodie

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

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

Posted on July 10, 2025 by Fiona

Previous letters pages can be found here.

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

OUR

LETTER PAGE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Monday #637

Posted on July 7, 2025 by Fiona

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

Letters to Enid part 74

and

Reading the Circus of Adventure to Brodie

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

The Circus of Adventure

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Letters to Enid part 73: From volume 4 issue 10

Posted on July 6, 2025 by Fiona

Previous letters pages can be found here.

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

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

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

OUR

LETTER PAGE

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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June 2025 round up

Posted on July 4, 2025 by Fiona

It’s July already (and it has rained pretty much every day so far) so let’s look back at June.

What I read

I continued with the Val McDermids at the start of June, then finally took a break once I had been to her talk. I’m now 11 books ahead of schedule, though, which is only a couple more than the number of Val McDermids I read over four weeks.

As I was seeing Sara Sheridan talk too I finally read the book of hers that I bought last February – better late than never, right?

My whole read-what-I-already-own campaign floundered as I borrowed all those Val McDermid books and one for another reading challenge, but I only read two BABALS (and one about publishing.)

So I read:

  • Beneath the Bleeding (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #5) – Val McDermid
  • The Dictionary of Lost Words – Pip Williams
  • My Scotland – McDermid, Val
  • Fever of the Bone (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #6) – Val McDermid
  • 1979 (Allie Burns #1) – Val McDermid
  • A Place of Execution – Val McDermid
  • The Queen Elizabeth Family
  • The Retribution (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #7) – Val McDermid
  • The Secrets of Blythswood Square – Sara Sheridan
  • Bad Moon (Elizabeth Cage #4) – Jodi Taylor
  • The Lamplighter’s Bookshop – Sophie Austin
  • Slayers Every One of Us – Jenny Owen Youngs & Kristin Russo,
  • Prose and Cons (Nevermore Bookshop #5) – Steffanie Holmes
  • Wrong Witch to Hex With – Molly Harper
  • Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop – Bo-Reum Hwang
  • Dead Head (Sweetpea #3) CJ Skuse

I ended the month still working through:

  • Everyone on This Train is a Suspect – Benjamin Stevenson
  • The Adventurous Four
  • The Distant Echo (Karen Pirie #1) – Val McDermid
  • Love Theoretically – Ali Hazelwood

What I watched

  • Given that Supernatural is 15 seasons long, unsurprisingly we are still watching it and have just started season 5. We’ve also been watching Taskmaster.
  • I watched a couple of episodes of Charmed but still haven’t picked my next watch.
  • My sister and I watched some Ten Years Younger and then started on season two of And Just Like That.
  • Ewan and I also watched Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which we agreed that although nowhere near as bad as Crystal Skull, was nowhere near as good as the original trilogy. Our ranking of the films – if you’re interested is Last Crusade, Raiders, Temple of Doom, Dial of Destiny, Crystal Skull.

What I did

  • Tried to protect our strawberries from slugs and managed to harvest a handful of non-eaten ones, plus we staked our peas up as they were a tangled mess in the wind.
  • I saw Val McDermid and Sara Sheridan (and Flora Johnson) talk at a book event.
  • We did the scarecrow trail again – this year’s theme was The Muppets.
  • We built Lego in the garden and had a picnic then had to rush everything inside again as the rain came on.
  • We had a family games afternoon where we played (amongst other things) Marvel Monopoly because the weather forecast was so bad.
  • Ewan and I have been playing Blue Prince – a puzzle game on the Playstation (and other platforms) and sometimes Brodie “helps” too. The basic premise is that you have inherited a house but the house “resets” at the end of each day. Every morning you enter and have to choose which rooms to draft. You have to collect keys to unlock doors, and gems to buy rooms and there are tons of puzzles to solve. Every time we play we have some sort of goal – like “draft the pool so we can draft the pump room and then drain the reservoir” or “get the tomb so we can pick up the diary key AND her ladyship’s chamber for the diary” but inevitably get sidetracked as we discover something else. Anyway, lots of fun and you don’t need to be a gamer to play. It mostly involves walking around the house and grounds and picking up items – no running or shooting or anything complicated (other than the puzzles!)

How was your June?

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Monday #636

Posted on June 30, 2025 by Fiona

I took last week off as I realised it was the last week of term and it was my last chance for peace during the day for SEVEN WEEKS. Now it’s the first week of these really long holidays, so why not get back to normal.

June round up

and

Letters to Enid part 73

“Well, fathead is too good a name,” said Mary. “Thinhead would be better. You can’t possibly have got any brains in you do a thing like that, so you must be a thinhead with no brains at all.”

Rather harsh, Mary – but nice wordplay! The Thing Mary speaks of is leaving a camera in the store-cave of the enemy, thus tipping them off that someone is about. After that thin headed bit of forgetfulness Tom pulls of a thinheaded stunt and goes off alone to retrieve the camera, getting caught in the process…

 

 

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Blyton references in non-fiction books

Posted on June 21, 2025 by Fiona

I have finally compiled enough references to make another non-fiction post worthwhile (the first was references in memoirs). That means that shortly after posting this I will undoubtedly find another reference and have to start a third post.

Lego Lost at Sea – Tracey Williams

A very interesting book about the cargo ship that lost several containers in 1997, spilling five million Lego pieces into the sea. Pieces regularly wash up on beaches in the South East of England but this book also touches on other curiosities that the author has found on beaches.

As time went on, I realised that much of the plastic I’d found was far older than I first thought. Not just the toys, but plugs made from Bakelite, poppit beads from the 1950s, ‘buried treasure’ ice-cream sticks from the 1960s and 1970s, Noddy toothbrushes and old fashioned hair curlers.

There’s also this picture of a washed-up Big Ears from a 1960s cereal packet.

The Library Book – Rebecca Gray

Several quotes from this one as it features writing from many authors on how they love libraries.

I suppose there must somewhere have been Enid Blyton, but since she too would have been backed in the same funereal but immensely serviceable boards she passed me by – Alan Bennett

I read all of Enid Blyton except for the Secret Seven, who irritated me for some reason –Val McDermid

Mrs Macgregor turned me into a crime writer. She introduced me to Enid Blyton, and then to Malcolm Saville, mysteries with chases and pace and surprise endings – Ann Cleeves

Strong Female Character – Fern Brady

Fern Brady’s memoir of growing up with undiagnosed autism and how that then affected her adult life has a couple of somewhat incongruous references.

Jeez. Sometimes it felt like we were characters in wildly different novels: Mum a wide-eyed schoolgirl in an Enid Blyton story and me a city slicker in a Jackie Collins bonkbuster.

…

Lisa worked in my first club, Big Daddy O’s, and made me feel as genteel as a kid from an Enid Blyton novel.

A History of Reading – Alberto Manguel

I had copied this reference from somewhere else as I have not read this book. I then had to track down the original post to give due credit – so thank you to Judith Crabb for this one. There are another few remarks in the book (but not full quotes given) and some additional context in Judith’s original post.

I knew about [jelly] from Enid Blyton’s books. [It] never matched, when I finally tasted it, the quality of that literary ambrosia.

…

[At one time he] saw a windowful of Noddy stories with their shrill-coloured covers.

My Scotland – Val McDermid / Nicola Sturgeon

Having been reading my way through Val McDermid’s novels a colleague then suggested her non-fiction work about Scotland (where various parts of her novels are set).

I didn’t pay attention to the heading for the first pages and initially thought this was Val McDermid’s words but having then seen husband and East Wemyss I looked again and realised that it was a foreword from Nicola Sturgeon.

When I read Enid Blyton’s Five Run Away Together, where the Famous Five set up camp in a cave on Kirrin Island, I was singularly unimpressed. Just one cave? In East Wemyss, we had half a dozen.

…

I remember as a child looking forward to the TV version of Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five, only to find myself, a few minutes in, stomping around the house complaining that they’d got it all wrong.

…

Fictional places would take shape in my mind’s eye with extraordinary detail. To this day, if I close my eyes, I can see with utter clarity my version of the Enchanted Forest, Kirrin Island, Narnia, Middle Earth, Treasure Island… and so many more of the imaginary landscapes of my childhood years.

Born in the 1940s – Tim Glynne-Jones

A group of boys sit on a bridge in Winslow, Buckinghamshire, watching their friends launch a toy boat on the stream. It’s a scene of innocence and beauty reminiscent of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books, which became essential reading for young adventurers in the forties.

The Five were far to busy having adventures to play with toy boats – it’s perhaps more reminiscent of the Secret Seven and their toy aeroplane, or some of her many short stories.

The 1950s Scrapbook & The Fun of the Fifties: Ads, Fads and Fashion – Robert Opie

I took these pictures so long ago that I have no idea which of the two books above any of them came from!

Text reads:

Road Safety

‘When crossing remember your kerb drill: look right, look left, then right again – wait until all traffic has passed and then walk over quickly.’ The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (ROSPA) had been founded in 1917, but as ownership increased in the 1950s and cars were driven faster, there were more pedestrian accidents, especially among children. RoSPA promoted safety messages through posters, leaflets, booklets, handkerchiefs, novelty cards and even a game called Tiddley (inspired by the game of Tiddley Winks – not being tipsy). Oxo produced a couple of road safety painting books. The Daily Mail sponsored Enid Blyton’s Road Safety Colouring Book, ‘A stands for Accident, Ambulances too, You must take care or it may come for you.’

Books for Children

A vast range of books were available for children to read – from the best- selling stories of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five (21 adventures between 1942 and 1963) and Captain W. E. Johns’ Biggles, tales of a pilot’s wartime exploits (96 titles published between 1932 and 1970), to the shunting of Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends, written by the Rev. Wilbert Awdry. Another train book from the early 1950s was Chuff’ty Puff’ty: The Jolly Railway Engine, which had a resemblance to the engine on the Sugar Puffs cereal box.
Annuals were a popular present at Christmas for boys and girls, and many comic papers and TV series created their own annuals, for instance, PC49 which ran for 112 episodes between 1947 and 1953. The Rupert Bear annual became a classic; the comic strip had begun in the Daily Express newspaper in 1920, with the first annual published in 1936- and they continue to this day.

Noddy

It was the inventive genius of Enid Blyton that created Noddy; she began with Noddy Goes to Toyland, which was published in 1949. She had been writing children’s stories since the 1920s.
In all, there were 24 Noddy books, the last one released in 1963. Along with Noddy’s best friend Big Ears, the world of television beckoned in 1955. Now every child was mesmerized by a boy wearing a blue pointy hat with a bell on top.
All types of toys joined in with Noddy fever. There were soft toys, lacing cards, fuzzy-felt, novelty egg cups and quoits, as well as the most frustrating thing in the toy cupboard, the hammering set – the nails held each wooden piece into a soft board, but they easily popped out as the next piece was being tapped in.

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Maps in books

Posted on June 19, 2025 by Fiona

Having shared the map Eileen Soper drew of her own garden in a recent post I made the same comment again – about how much I love a map in a book.

That got me thinking that I should then scan as many maps as I could find in my books and share them here – a sort of celebration of the book map.

Before I got the scanner set up, though, I thought I’d better check the blog’s media gallery as I would probably have scanned some of them already, to go along with reviews.

Well, it turns out that I’ve already shared most of the maps I have! The only glaring lack is the Lone Pine Books, but those books have so many maps between them that I’m going to save them for their own post. So for now, here’s a reminder of all the maps I’ve already shared – plus a few new ones.

Kirrin

It’s a shame that there were rarely maps in Blyton’s books – and never endpaper maps. How I’d have loved a map of Kirrin and Smuggler’s Top and the Valley of Adventure and so on. Though I can see how putting a map containing secret passages at the start of these books might spoil the story somewhat. Perhaps a map of the general area at the start then a map of, or a map including, the secret passages could come at the end?

Anyway, what we have instead are later impressions of Kirrin. This one I shared very recently as it is from the New Famous Five book, Five and the Forgotten Treasure. It doesn’t match with my mental image of Kirrin, but as we never had a Blyton-approved map we’ll never know how accurate or not accurate this is.

We also have this full-colour one from The Famous Five Everything you ever wanted to know, bu Norman Wright. This is somewhat closer to my mental picture but some things are still in the wrong place.

The Cherrys

I assume all the Cherry books by Will Scott had a map at the front but again I have to grumble about how I only have two of them as they are so hard to find (and afford!).

This first one is from The Cherrys to the Rescue.

And this is from The Cherrys’ Famous Case.

Adventure Island

The Adventure Island books by Helen Moss always have a map at the front. Every adventure takes place on the island so the maps are pretty similar, though new places are added as the children discover them. Some stay on the map but others only appear when they are relevant.

This is the one on Helen Moss’ website, hence the lack of the big line down the middle where the pages meet. And here is the one from The Mystery of the Cursed Ruby, which is number 5. As you can see there are a few less details. (As a bonus the map is printed with a gap in the middle so that nothing is lost in there!)

Most Unladylike Maps

Murder Most Unladylike has a map of Deepdean, Daisy and Hazel’s school.

Book two (Arsenic for Tea) has a map of Fallingford, Daisy’s home where their second murder mystery occurs.

map arsenic for tea

There’s even a map – or perhaps more accurately – a diagram of the train from book 3, First Class Murder. I listened to the audiobook of this so I missed out on this helpful diagram of who was in which room.

I also listened to the audiobook of the first Ministry of Unladylike Activity book, so I missed out on the three (!) map pages of Elysium Hall, which also would have been helpful seeing as solving the murder largely hinged on working out who was where in the house during a blackout.

 

It appears that all the books have maps, but I will stick with the ones I have read for now.

And the rest

Milly Molly Mandy has a map of her village with helpful annotations on who lives where.

milly molly mandy

And of course Eileen Soper’s own garden map.

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Monday #634

Posted on June 16, 2025 by Fiona

Maps in books

and

Blyton references in works of non-fiction

I am paraphrasing like mad here because I didn’t take a note of this at the time!

Unlike, say, the Famous Five who never seemed to learn their lessons. Let’s go into this dark cave at midnight, nothing bad happened last time!

– Val McDermid

Val (as I now call her, having been in the same room as her once), was talking about her love of the Chalet School books. One thing she particularly liked about the series was that the characters grew and developed through the books and if a girl broke a leg in one books she would still be limping a few books later. Which then led to something along the lines of the quote above. I think I have the general message if not the exact wording.

Sometimes I go into caves. But not at midnight…

 

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If you like Blyton: The Challenge of Palores Point by Zöe Billings

Posted on June 15, 2025 by Fiona

Following on from The Mystery of Tully Hall and The Secret of Flittermouse Cliffs, The Challenge of Palores Point is the third book in the Great Friends at Grey Owls series by Zöe Billings.

I read this from September to November last year – if you’re wondering why it took me so long to read it I was actually proof reading it, so I was correcting it and making the odd suggestion as I went. Having finished it just in time for the pre-Christmas printing deadline I then entirely forgot about reviewing it!

Palores point

You may well know what palores means, but before I read this book I didn’t. Palores is the Cornish word for the chough.

You also may well have seen choughs in the wild – they are found on the west coast of the UK and Ireland. They are only found in a couple of places on the west coast of Scotland so I’ve never seen a wild chough.

Having read this book however, I seem to be noticing choughs a lot more often. There are two in the wildlife centre near me and recently this book was highlighted to me at work.

I actually thought it said Marcus Harris (aka 70s Julian) at first.

But I’m getting off-topic now.

The palores, aka the chough, is an important element of the book which opens with the friends (Jenny, James, Liz and Barrie) deciding that their school project is going to be about choughs. They choose the bird as they are going to be visiting Cornwall to stay with Jenny’s aunt, who has just sent Jenny an article about the challenges facing choughs in Cornwall.

Cornish Camping and Criminal Catching

In Cornwall the four camp at Aunt Jane’s campsite, which borders a nature reserve. They visit the reserve and learn more about the chough and other wild birds, many of which are under threat not just because of the usual things like habitat loss but also because of their nests being raided for eggs.

Being the conscientious children they are the four decide that they are going to keep a watch for bird egg thieves and soon have some suspects in mind. They put technology to good use again as James has bought a special motion activated trail camera for recording wildlife – but it could just as easily record people. They are also assisted by Anka who they have made friends with in Cornwall.

Despite having an adult nearby the children manage to do a fair bit of night-time surveillance, though somehow the nests are still getting targeted and neither the children nor the camera is able to see the thieves.

At least, not until James notices something on the trail camera recording and just has to go take a look…

My thoughts

To throw in a horrible pun which I’m sure she’s heard many times already – I think that Zöe should be choughed with this book.

It’s another great blend of detective work and adventure alongside the fun of four kids exploring interesting places and enjoying each other’s company. As with the first two books in the series the modern setting means that we can’t get away from technology but it is carefully woven into the story without us having to deal with four kids glued to Tiktok.

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Letters to Enid part 72: from volume 4 issue 9

Posted on June 12, 2025 by Fiona

Previous letters pages can be found here.

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

Letters page from Volume 4, issue 9.

OUR

LETTER PAGE

A letter from Sherin Ratnagar, Bombay, India.
Dear Enid Blyton,
I am a member of the “Famous Five” Club. Six other friends of mine are members too. We meet every Saturday, in a shed, on which we have painted “F.F.” We have a smashing password you wouldn’t dream of. We do wish we had adventures but we never do. I like “Five Have Plenty of Fun,” best of all your “Fives ” books. I live in India, and we have to wait a long time for new books. I must end my letter now or you will get too many sheets to read!
Love, from
Sherin Ratnagar.

(I have printed your letter, Sherin, because I am sure that all F.F. members here will like to hear of your F.F. Club in faraway India. You have won our Letter-Page prize, so look out for a new book!)

A letter from Susan Cradock, Aston, Bucks.
Dear Enid Blyton,
We have started a Club called “The Put-Em-Right Club” after a name in one of your books. We have called it this because one important thing we want to do is help to put the little spastic children right. This week all our six members have arranged a Rummage
Sale, and although we had a lot of things left over we are able to send you £1 for the spastics.
With best wishes, from
Susan Cradock
(Leader) and the other five members.

(I have many letters about clubs, Susan, but yours has a most unusual name and you live up to it too. Thank you – and all your members as well!)

A letter from Marian and Isobel Spence.
Dear Enid Blyton,
My friend and I have a Nature Club, and we made our badges in the way you said in your magazine some while ago. We have our meetings every Tuesday and Wednesday in the Park, and gather lots of notes for our Nature books. We also collect nature pictures to stick in our books – we get them from the Nature page in your magazine, called “Some things to look for,” and we get them from your nature stories too.
Yours sincerely,
Marian Spence and Isobel Spence.

(I can see that you and Isobel enjoy your little Nature Club, Marian, and I am very pleased to hear about it.)

A club-theme this time around. I initially thought that Blyton must save up letters on a theme then use them together, and then I thought that she probably got so many hundreds of letters a week that it would not have posed a problem to find three or four on any given topic!

I wonder if Sherin and her six friends ever thought to call their club the Secret Seven? Not only does it have seven members but they also have their initials on the door and use a password! Mind you, I’ve played at being the Famous Five as a child with only two people, so perhaps numbers aren’t that important!

I thought it interesting that Susan and her friends chose to name themselves after a group who were as unsuccessful as the Put-Em-Rights. Isn’t the whole message of that story that you should be careful about judging and trying to fix other people’s lives especially when your own behaviours may be less than perfect? The word choice of “putting the [children with CP] right” is unpleasant though I’m sure they Susan and her friends meant well, and would only be using language that they had heard at the time.

I don’t know why but Marian and Isobel’s letter suddenly reminded me of a short-lived club I was in as a child. A small group of us formed the Winnie-the-Pooh club, and we met every week. I don’t actually think that any of us even loved Winnie-the-Pooh that much but it was the only thing we all liked enough to agree on. We basically got together and would draw pictures of the characters, or use stickers, but would soon get bored and play hide and seek etc. It didn’t last long as we always had to hold it in the garden of the youngest member as she wasn’t allowed to play at anyone else’s house, and if it rained we had to cram into the porch as we weren’t allowed anywhere else in her house, and her parents didn’t like the noise of us either…

Like I say, not sure why the far more interesting and organised nature club reminded me of that – but it did!

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Monday #633

Posted on June 9, 2025 by Fiona

I was reading an un-put-down-able book last night so didn’t get around to doing the Monday post (yes, another Val McDermid but I am seeing her talk later this week, so I’ll probably stop binge-reading her stuff after that. Probably.) but here it is now.

Letters to Enid part 73

and

If you like Blyton: The Challenge of Palores Point by Zöe Billings

As I’m going to write about book #3 this week, this feels like an opportune moment to revisit books 1 & 2 in the Great Friends from Grey Owls series.

If You Like Blyton: The Mystery of Tully Hall by Zöe Billings

If you like Blyton: The Secret of Flittermouse Cliffs by Zöe Billings

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If you like Blyton: Cherry Ames by Helen Wells

Posted on June 8, 2025 by Fiona

I have had two of the Cherry Ames books sitting on my bookshelf for years. I’m not sure how many years exactly, but here they are (sixth and seventh from the right) back in 2019 when I did my series on what was on my bookshelves.

As part of my aim to finally read my way through all the unread books on my shelves (and stacked up around the flat) I picked up the first Cherry Ames book and read it. That’s something like 5 down and 70 to go, then.

I don’t remember when or where I bought them, but I’ll have bought them as they combine two things I like – nursing stories and vintage children’s books with nice covers.

Who is Cherry Ames?

As of the second chapter of her first book Cherry Ames is a student nurse in America.  She leaves home to study at Spencer Nursing School, and then according to the dustjacket of book one, she becomes (amongst other things) a senior nurse, flight nurse, cruise nurse, chief nurse, visiting nurse, private duty nurse, department store nurse, dude ranch nurse, mountaineer nurse…

I’m not sure that’s an entirely normal career trajectory but at least there’s plenty of variety! I wonder if she moves every 6-12 months or whether she does a Famous Five and barely ages instead.

Interestingly although Helen Wells begins the series, she doesn’t write all the books. She wrote 1-7, 12, 14 and 17-27. while Julie Tatham wrote 8-11 and 13-16.

Student nursing

The world of Cherry’s student nursing was familiar to me – mostly from having read various other books about student nurses from the 1930s-1950s. Less so from my own student nurse days as thankfully they were quite different by the time I started.

(Hilariously the dustjacket blurb reads that nursing offers: many opportunities for service, for adventure, for romance [and] makes a nurse’s career a glamorous one. Definitely not in my experience! I found it offered many opportunities for a sore back and aching feet, and absolutely no glamour.)

As was regular then – both in the UK and the US it would seem – student nurses began as probationers for three months, winning their caps if they passed. Probationers would have lessons on anatomy, hygiene, nutrition and so on, including practical learning (which always seems to involve wrestling with a recalcitrant dummy patient) as well as working shifts on the wards.

And so that’s what Cherry and her fellow probationers do. Cherry, of course, is not only pretty and popular but clever and compassionate so she does well – though she’s not convinced she will pass and get her cap. This is at least partly down to the fact that she does sometimes make very risky decisions – like smuggling the aforementioned recalcitrant dummy across the hospital to cheer up a child patient whose room she was never meant to be in in the first place.

There are some other risks she takes which are more serious – but the bigger the gamble the bigger the pay-off – and in the end lives are saved.

The fact that we know she goes on to be a senior nurse takes away some of the suspense as we know she won’t fail or be thrown out, but that was never likely in a children’s book anyway. Would have made for a bit of a depressing read if so!

For fans of Blyton?

I’d say this one was a little more of a stretch than some previous recommendations. If this were a series on If You Like Nancy Drew, it would be top of the list. Cherry and Nancy are quite similar – and the writing style is too – so it reads like it could have been a Nancy Drew book if only Nancy had decided to become a nurse and not an amateur sleuth. Saying that there is a little mystery solving done in the first Cherry Ames book – and a few later books have mystery in the title!

However, I have recommended that if you like Blyton you might like Nancy Drew, so we are only one step away from that.

Although perhaps a bit too perfect Cherry is likeable and her hospital experiences are interesting. While there are a few challenges and unhappy occurrences for Cherry along the way these are not dwelled on, as this is a light read for (as per the dustjacket) girls aged 11-16.

 

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May 2025 round up

Posted on June 4, 2025 by Fiona

What I read

I have been reading a lot this month – I am going to see Val McDermid talk soon so I thought I had better read a few more of her books (I’d only read two when I booked my ticket in the middle of May!). Turns out her books are un-put-down-able and I have been reading them in 2-3 days, or in one case, a single day. The only thing that has really slowed me down is having to wait until I can get to the library for the next one!

I’m back to seven books ahead now, as I managed 15 books in May. Only two were BABALs, but I did borrow four from the library because it was the only (free) way to get my hands on the Val McDermids I wanted to read.

So I read:

  • The Paris Bookshop for the Broken-Hearted – Rebecca Raisin
  • The Secret Seven
  • Cherry Ames, Student Nurse (Cherry Ames #1) – Helen Wells
  • Girl Meets Grump (Hailey Gardiner)
  • Grave Peril (Dresden Files #3) – Jim Butcher
  • Wizard of Most Wicked Ways (Whimbrel House #4) – Charlie N Holmberg
  • Five and the Forgotten Treasure – Chris Smith (reviewed here and here)
  • The Bookstore Sisters (Once Upon a Bookshop #3) – Alice Hoffman
  • Love on the Brain – Ali Hazelwood
  • The Buttercup Farm Family
  • The Wire in the Blood (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #2) – Val McDermid
  • This is Going to Hurt – Adam Kay
  • The Last Temptation (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #3) – Val McDermid
  • The Torment of Others (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #4) – Val McDermid
  • Killing the Shadows – Val McDermid

I ended the month still working through:

  • 1979 (Allie Burns #1) – Val McDermid
  • Beneath the Bleeding (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #5) – Val McDermid
  • The Queen Elizabeth Family
  • The Dictionary of Lost Words – Pip Williams
  • The Lamplighter’s Bookshop – Sophie Austin
Screenshot

What I watched

  • Given that Supernatural is 15 seasons long, unsurprisingly we are still watching it. Currently on season 4. We’ve also been watching Taskmaster.
  • As I have been reading so much I haven’t chosen anything new to watch yet, but I did watch a couple of episodes of Malory Towers.
  • My sister and I finished The Flatshare and went back to Ten Years Younger.
  • With Brodie we watched the sequel to Twister (1996) – Twisters.

What I did

Despite the good weather I feel like we didn’t get up to much in May. I did spend a lot of afternoons sitting at the park with my book after school though!

  • I went a bit mad with the googly eyes at work.
  • We visited the wildlife park and paid more attention to their two choughs this time, having read The Challenge of Palores Point by Zoe. I am just now realising that I haven’t reviewed this yet – I really thought I had! Well, at least that gives me an idea for next week’s blog.
  • We did our favourite riverside walk and bought ice-cream at one end, and then had a paddle on our way back.
  • We took a ride on a steam train (pulled by a faceless Thomas!) and met Paddington at the station.
  • We had a fairly massive clear out of Brodie’s bedroom and put aside lots of books to donate to charity (don’t worry he still has hundreds!).

How was your May?

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Monday #632

Posted on June 2, 2025 by Fiona

May has been a month of two parts – the first part where it was warm and sunny all the time, and then when it was cloudy and rainy almost all the time. Perhaps June will strike a better balance!

May round up

and

If you like Blyton: Cherry Ames by Helen Wells

Seeing as we just had a post about Eileen Soper’s work, why not revisit some of her “hack work” – her words not mine! – for Blyton. Specifically all those times she drew children that looked awfully familiar…

The Five as you have never seen them before

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Eileen Soper’s artwork

Posted on June 1, 2025 by Fiona

I’ve been promising this for a few weeks and yet I almost never managed it tonight either as my scanner decided it was firmly offline and couldn’t be persuaded otherwise. Luckily I bought a cable for it recently and so I was able to connect it up and get it working in the end.

Wildings

You know how I love a book with a map in it. It’s a very large map and as even a single page of this book is too big for my A4 scanner, this is the best I could do – combining several scans into one image. I think it is enough to give you an overview of the size and scale of the gardens as well as the key features. Click on it to see a much larger version.

Something new on every page

There is honestly at least one illustration or painting on each page, often more than one.

From sketches in various stages of progress,

To an array of wildlife drawings,

 

Some of which are also in colour.

There’s even a self-portrait or two. These are of Soper bundled up to go badger watching – unsurprisingly she put a lot more effort into her renderings of the badgers than she did into drawing herself.

There are also a dozen or so full and half-page colour works, such as the badgers that sketchy Eileen above was observing.

This is only a tiny fraction of what’s in the book – and that’s only a fraction of the thousands of drawings that were found at Wildings. The book is almost worth it for the artwork alone.

I’ve stuck to just a handful of examples here as for one, it’s late (it always seems to be late when I’m blogging!) but there’s also copyright restrictions to consider. Saying that, if there’s anything specific you’d like to see of Soper’s work then just ask and I’ll see if there’s anything in the book that matches.

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Letters to Enid part 71: From volume 4, issue 8

Posted on May 29, 2025 by Fiona

Previous letters pages can be found here.

Letters page from Volume 4, issue 8.
May 9th – May 22nd, 1956.

OUR

LETTER PAGE

A letter from Jennifer Bursnall, Llandudno.
Dear Enid Blyton,
A few days ago some friends and I were playing Red Indians on some big rocks. One of my friends and I were just passing some rocks when we both heard a baa of a sheep below us. As my friend had a dog she could not come, so I clambered down. The sheep was not a bit frightened, and I discovered later that it had once been a pet lamb, fed from a bottle. It was caught in some bramble sprays. So I freed it and took it through two rocks standing close together. The sheep then followed me down a rough lane to the farm. As I came near the farm two dogs started barking, thinking that I was doing their job, bringing sheep in from the fields! The farmer’s wife thanked me and said the sheep would have been there all night without food, for they probably would not have missed it.
Love from your Busy Bee,
Jennifer Bursnall.

(This is a most interesting letter, Jennifer, and deserves my letter prize. I am so glad you were able to rescue the sheep.)

A letter from Sandra Green.
Dear Enid Blyton,
One day I saw two big boys throwing stones at a small bird. I picked it up and took it to the vet, and he said that one of its wings had been broken. Then the vet did something to its wing, and told me to take it home, which I did. In a few weeks’ time the bird could fly again, so we let him out of the bird-cage where we had been keeping him, and he flew away. And now every morning he comes and sits on our bird-table, has some food and flies away again.
Yours faithfully,
Sandra Green.

(What a good thing you were there when the bird was hurt, Sandra!)

A letter from Barbara Newman, Wotton-under-Edge, Glos.
Dear Enid Blyton,
My little sister Hilary, who is only just two, picked up one of my Noddy books, and saw a picture of Noddy crying. She went up to Mummy and said “Poor Noddy!” –and then she wiped his tears with her dress!
With lots of love, from
Barbara Newman.

(What a dear little sister you have, Barbara – she must amuse you when she does things like that!)

Two letters from animal rescuers this week – one of the few cases where a fundraiser didn’t win the prize. In fact there are no fundraising letters at all this week.

I wonder what kind of bird Sandra rescued?

I do like when Blyton picks letters which are not much more than an amusing anecdote from a small child. Barbara’s anecdote is sweet and I’m sure she was thrilled to see it be printed.

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Monday #631

Posted on May 27, 2025 by Fiona

Yes, I know it’s Tuesday, but better late than never, right? For a moment I couldn’t remember why I didn’t manage to sort this post out yesterday evening but then I remembered – I was binge reading a Val McDermid book and was determined to finish it. Spoiler alert – I did finish it, hence the not blogging.

Last week I was supposed to be sharing illustrations from Duff Hart-Davis’ book about Eileen Soper, but could I find it to do some scanning? No, I could not. I later discovered it behind the sofa so providing it doesn’t go walkabout this week, I’ll get it done.

Letters to Enid part 71

and

Eileen Soper’s illustrations

Stef and I have had an idea for a new bit of fan fiction, and we might actually even write something!

One suggestion was Dick bumping into Jeff Thomas – and I made these superbly detailed notes.

Dick was on the air base. The basey-air base that had no name yet because it was late and the authors were tired. He looked up and saw Jeff Thomas who had risen to the rank of a higher rank than whatever rank he has in Billycock Hill…

It’s just a matter of filling in the blanks later, right?

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Famous Five and the Forgotten Treasure part 2

Posted on May 21, 2025 by Fiona

Last time I ran out of time to finish the review let alone scan any of the illustrations or the map, but hopefully I can put that right this time.

Last time I got a far as the Five having the miserable Roland tagging along after them. It’s at this point that I realise the boy’s name is actually Raymond. I really should have checked before I wrote part one.

Anne’s brainwave

While it’s nice to see Anne having a non-food-preparing moment to shine it’s sort of a shame that she is still relegated to reading people’s feelings to solve part of the mystery. She identifies that there really is someone weird going on with Raymond and his mother.

He’s not missing her – he’s afraid of her. His mother hasn’t been pleased to see them around the dig and that’s because [Spoiler!!] she’s not his mother, she’s an impostor! The real mother is bound and gagged, and her assistant has taken her place so she can loot the dig site in Whispering Wood instead of giving the artefacts to a museum.

I couldn’t help but wonder why she then passed Raymond on to the Kirrins – known for their adventures as they are – and asked him to report back to her if anyone in the village started asking questions. Yes she threatened to hurt his mother if he didn’t do as he was told, and yes he didn’t dare tell them what was really going on but what a risk to take! She’d have been far better tying Raymond up with his mother until they were finished.

Back to the future

As the flashback is only about half the book it’s all resolved pretty quickly. They make one night-time visit to the camp, rescue Raymond’s real mother and then, rather recklessly they change the lights on the cliff so that the baddies’ boat crashes into the rocks and sinks.

Back in the present day it’s clear that Raymond (the man storming out of Kirrin Cottage earlier) is after the treasure that sank with the boat. George has given him the map to find it. It’s still there as young George deliberately misled the police about where the boat went down, to prevent sightseers and treasure hunters swarming the area. I don’t feel that’s something George would do – she’s not a liar and she would recognise the importance of the historical artefacts.

The New Five then get to (briefly) have their adventure as they go up against Raymond to prevent him from stealing the treasure.

My thoughts

This isn’t a bad book. but I think it could have been better. As I said already the two stories are fairly thin as neither is a full book.

George’s ability to recount an adventure in such detail is unrealistic especially when it comes to conversations she wasn’t even present for, and those pages could have been better spent fleshing out the present-day action.

George is not particularly recognisable as a grown-up version of the girl we knew, even if she does still insist on being called George.

If this wasn’t a Famous Five book I’d probably have rated it higher than three stars. There were some nice touches, such as the parallel between the New and Old Famous Five arriving at Kirrin, the New ones ribbing George for the jolly good language (though there was very little of it!), the reference to the Sanders’ Dairy and so on. We briefly get to see Kirrin Island, the secret passage from the study and the passage from the quarry to the island (both of which are never seen or used again in the original books).

It’s also illustrated which seems unusual these days. Shame it’s not Soper-esq but it’s better than nothing.

So yes, not bad, but not great. I read it in an afternoon and at least wasn’t prompted to put it down repeatedly to write great long complaints so that’s something, and I’m intrigued enough by the ending to read the next one!

 

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