The Little Lost Brother

[Anita Bensoussane]

It's not often that an Enid Blyton story leaves me feeling upset, but last night I read 'The Little Lost Brother' in Enid Blyton's Sunny Stories No. 166 and I found it terribly sad even though all turns out okay in the end.

Nine-year-old Nora treats her younger brother Tommy (aged six) extremely badly, even though he's good-natured and adores her. One day she breaks his new toy aeroplane and Mother makes her give Tommy her new doll instead, but then Nora breaks that too. Tommy weeps for the doll, saying, "Its head has come off. It's dead." As a child I used to imagine that my toys were alive and I'd have been aghast if anything like that had happened, so I feel for Tommy.

The children's Auntie Ellen, who bought them the doll and the aeroplane, says it must be dreadful for Tommy to have such an unkind sister. Nora replies, "Well, I'm sure I don't want him for a brother. Silly baby thing! Wants to play with a doll, and he's a boy! I wish he'd go right away and leave me alone!" She runs out of the room and slams the door, leaving Tommy sobbing, and then goes off to school.

When she arrives home, Tommy isn't there and Mother says she's given Tommy away to Auntie Ellen because "We thought that as you didn't want him for a brother, Auntie had better have him. She hasn't any children of her own, you know, and she and Uncle John both love Tommy. So she took him home."

Hardly able to believe what she's hearing, Nora says, "But Tommy's ours," to which Mother replies, "Well, he's Auntie's now." She hammers the message home, saying things like, "You make him very unhappy, you know, Nora, although he loves you with all his heart... I really can't have a nice boy like Tommy living in a home where his sister wants to be alone... Well, Nora, you should be very happy now. You have what you want - your little brother is out of your way, and will not bother you any more."

We then see Nora gazing at Tommy's empty chair at tea-time and missing his chatter. A little later she's about to call him to look at a sandcastle she's built when she remembers he's not there. And so it goes on...

I must admit I found the story almost unbearably sad! I wondered whether it had been reprinted recently and discovered that it was used in Award's The Wishing Spells and Other Stories in 2003, which was reprinted by Bounty as late as 2014. My copy of The Wishing Spells and Other Stories is an Award 2nd impression dating from 2004 and a few incidental details in 'The Little Lost Brother' have been edited, but that's all. Nora has been renamed Alice, the "cosy nursery" is now a "cosy room", "twice times table" has been changed to "two times table", "handwork" has become "handicrafts" and Daddy has no longer "gone away to war" but has "gone away to work". "Meccano" is now "Lego" and "it wasn't any fun to play Red Indians by herself" has been altered to "it wasn't any fun playing by herself". There are a few other minor changes, very similar to the ones already listed.

Perhaps surprisingly, Nora still punches, slaps, smacks and pushes Tommy in the Award version. And she still goes off to afternoon school alone.

I was wondering whether anyone else has read this story and whether they also thought it was unusually sad. Maybe it's just me being over-sensitive!

[Katharine]

It's not a story I've come across.

I don't know that it struck me as sad, my initial reaction was why send the little boy away when it was Nora who was being nasty? Presumably because the intention of the story was 'be careful what you wish for'.

Strange that Meccano has been replaced with Lego though, as it's still available to purchase new even now!

[Anita Bensoussane]

I think Meccano was very popular back when the story was first published though (1940), whereas Lego is a best-seller now.

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

In Malory Towers, Sally doesn't like baby Felicity.

[Katharine]

I know it's only a story, but I think such a strategy was rather risky - suppose Nora had enjoyed being an only child?

[Wolfgang]

I suppose that's the point, Katharine - in this story Nora realises what she's missing.
If things were always this easy to repair in the end...

@Viv - It's Daffy, not Felicity, Felicity is Darrell's sister. Actually it's quite a coincidence that Daffy became Vivi in the German editions...

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

ooops I thought "that's not right when I hit send. But that time, I didn't delete