Another fortnight gone already, and another Enid Blyton magazine - a real 'bumper' issue - with two short stories and THREE serial stories!
The cover shows an illustration from the first story
Mr Twiddle Gets A Shock - which can be read in Enid Blyton's Bedtime Annual 1977. Its a great example of a Mr Twiddle story, and I enjoyed it - with Mr Twiddle being pestered by an elephant, which he at first thinks is a snake...and then sees a monkey looking in the window - which turns out to be his wife, back from the shops! poor Mrs Twiddle!
In her
Editorial letter Enid is pleased to tell us of the great success of her Famous Five Club - which now has around 100,500 members! To celebrate this, 100 members will be picked at random and will receive a signed Famous Five book of their choice. membership numbers are included in this issue, so that the members can see if they have been lucky enough to win. They can then write and request the Famous Five book of their choice.
Enid also tells us about her hazel nut trees, which are loaded with clusters of nuts this year, much to the delight of the squirrels. We've had a hazel tree at the bottom of our garden ever since I was a child - but for some reason the nuts are usually empty when cracked open...not much use! I'm not sure why this is...maybe someone who knows would be able to tell me!
Our Letter Page as always contains some interesting letters from readers. One tells about a little girl who once lived in a small house in a town but then her 'dream came true' and her family moved to a bigger house in the country. I find it interesting, having lived in 'a town' all my life, that Enid (and her readers) apparently think of a town as bad and the countryside as good. Maybe I have an unrealistic view of town life though, as I have always lived only a mile from the open countryside, and so it can't really be classed as 'in a town'...
The thing that I found interesting about this issue's letters is that they paint such a great picture of times gone by - and the interest of children - so grateful to be living 'in the country' and in another letter, a little girl, Margaret Adams, donating 6d towards the Famous Five Ward, because she gave up her ice creams. She hopes the 6d 'will buy a little piece of happiness for the children'. How sweet! I can't imagine a child thinking like this in 2018! Then there's the little boy, Roger Goddard, who received an Enid Blyton birthday cake, as did selected members of the Magazine club each month. He was so very pleased to receive it, and writes '
we had a lovely birthday tea with my brothers and some friends, and they all thought I was very lucky. Tomorrow I am going to take a piece of the cake to my teacher at school...' - a picture of a simpler life, when small pleasures were appreciated!
Next we have the uncollected short story
Follow That Hat! - which is a pleasant tale, not unlike several others Enid wrote, about a boy helping a member of the fairy folk, and of course getting a reward for his trouble. You can read it by following the link below.
Following on from this we have the first chapter of a new serial -
Bonfire Night For the Secret Seven - which later became 'Secret Seven Fireworks'. Its probably one of my favourite of the later Secret Seven books, and as a child I read it many times. I loved the idea that Susie forms a rival club, and that the 'crime' that takes place was something that could quite easily happen to me. We always collected wood for our bonfire, as The Seven do - and one time we had some of it 'stolen' by a rival bonfire collector. We always made our bonfire on the strip of land between the canal and our house...and so the rival was easily able to drag the wood down to their own pile! We went and dragged it back!!
Once again, I can't help thinking Burgess Sharrocks took far more care over his Magazine illustrations than he did over the book versions. here are the two illustrations compared - first, the magazine illustration -
and here is how it appeared in the book -
Next we have
The Goblin Shop - which can be read by following the link.
PUZZLE PAGE -
Sunbeams Prize Puzzle -
Here are some girls names. If you sort the letters out correctly you will find that the first letters, read downwards, form another girl's name. What is it?
RLIAEC
CIEAL
AIRT
VOEIL
ANDLI
FAMOUS FIVE Prize Puzzle -
Cross out the name of a popular sport in the following string of letters and you will find the name of one of the greatest players. Name the sport and the player.
MSAOTCCTHEERWS
A Puzzle for my Busy Bees -
A general knowledge question for you!
In which county of England will you find Stonehenge?
The next chapter of
Adventure of the Strange Ruby follows - 'What Shall Tessa Do?'. There's an illustration, again, a bit simple compared to those in the book. Here are the two illustrations from this latest chapter -
The magazine continues with the THIRD serial story -
The Ragamuffin Mystery - chapter 6 - Tillyhwllanyll Inn. I'm quite glad this name was changed when the book version was published! It would have been one of those names that as a child I would 'slur over' and probably call it something like 'tillywillanill'.
The illustrations for Ragamuffin are the same as in the novel version, except that for the magazine they had one added colour.
In
Our News-sheet which always appears at the back of each magazine, I was interested to see that Enid includes the address of the Spastic Centre, so that children can send donations directly there rather than via the magazine. For some reason, I hadn't realised the spastics centre was in London, and had presumed it was nearer to Beckonsfield. The address was
Centre For Spastic Children, 61 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London SW 3 Is it still there...or did the building disappear long ago?
That's it for another fortnight - happy reading to you all!
I'd better supply the link -
https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/mag ... ?magid=948
Many thanks, as always, to Tony, for doing the scans, which add so much to my reviews. I know he's busier than ever just now, and so I really appreciate your work on this, Tony!