The Enid Blyton Society

I have been sent the email below asking me to put a link to an article on our Facebook page, but as I enjoyed the article myself (should have been in the Journal!) I thought some of our forumites might enjoy it too. If it gets any comments I will send a link to Richa.

My name is Richa Gupta, and I am a high school student from Bangalore, India. Enid Blyton was probably the first author whose books I read and completed, and her influence lingers in my life even today. My article at The Huffington Post is an attempt to find those threads of memory, and to lace them together to form something more coherent and powerful.

Here's the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/eni ... bf74f03c6b" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I thoroughly enjoyed reading that. Richa says everything that I feel about Blyton's world of books, security, escapism, learning whilst young to relate to others etc. That article would be well read in the Journal I'm sure and would fit between the Journal pages nicely.

I loved reading Richa's article, and so nice that she feels to go back into these books after years away is like re-visiting old friends. I'm sure so many of us feel this way, too. That's why we love these books so much and the characters we've grown up with. They feel like real friends.

Great read.

A very enjoyable article. It's a few decades since I first became acquainted with Enid Blyton but I still feel the same as Richa Gupta. My Blyton books are lifelong friends, always there whatever happens. They taught me a lot and helped shape me, and they continue to bring me pleasure. Even when life is busy and I don't have time to read them, simply knowing that they're there is a great comfort.

Perceptive article, and what a great writing style! I really enjoyed it, and agree with everything she wrote - going back into that comforting Blyton world is something I enjoy experiencing every day when I'm reading a Blyton book, and also when I'm writing one, I get a similar feeling! This article does indeed deserve to be in The Journal.

Yes, a wonderful article. I agree — Tony, could you please ask Richa if she would give permission for it to be published in the Journal? It definitely deserves to be there and I'm sure other EBS members around the world would love what she has to say too.

I especially appreciate what Richa says here about why Enid's books resonate with children:

It was all very idealistic, and nothing like the real world. But when you’re still in single digits, you’re in no hurry to escape the bubble you’ve conjured around yourself. You want to live in a world where problems can be resolved within a few pages, where innocent children can triumph over manipulative adults, where people don’t always have to have ulterior motives.

Blyton provided me with a safe world… a place where I could explore, question, hope.

Even reading them as an adult, I can say that while I don't expect problems in my own life and the wider world to be "resolved within a few pages" either, Enid's stories still remind me that goodness and decency and courage and kindness do matter and they do make a difference in people's lives — and there's still plenty of those qualities in the world, if we look hard enough.

I will certainly send a link to this thread to Richa and hope that she might like to register and reply to some of the nice comments. I'm afraid that even if Richa agreed it cannot go into the next Journal as I have already completed an 88-pager, but if she would like I can definitely offer to put it into our July Journal.

Lovely article! I especially liked her expression "Within minutes, I'd acquainted myself with old friends". That's exactly how I feel when I re-read a Blyon book I've not read for a while! Well done, Richa!

I really enjoyed reading Richa's article and how I could relate to it. Enid Blyton books shaped my life, gave me a safe escape from the real world (my home life wasn't the best). I

I was lucky in that my childhood might be described as 'idyllic' except for a bit of bullying in my early teens - with freedom, long hot summers, bike rides, picnics, days out, hide and seek and building dens and fishing for sticklebacks and playing in a tree house etc. Reading Enid Blyton books as an adult takes me back to that idyllic sunny time!

I can identify with the article "making friends with" and "getting to know" the characters in the books.
(not just Blyton books as well).

I see that Richa has joined the forums, her name appears at the bottom of the Home Page, but as yet she's not commented on this thread. I do hope she has time to read this thread.

She has read it as she logged on soon after I activated her and she then sent me another email asking me to slightly alter my initial post which I did.

Thanks for letting us know Tony.

A great article. I would imagine copyright is with The Huffington Post, which might cause a problem in putting it in the Journal. I have added it to our Facebook page.

I would have thought that the copyright would be with Richa herself, and I wouldn't see any problem with putting it in the Journal as it would not be appearing on the internet and only available to subscribers. I recently had an article that had been published in The Lady in the the Journal and all it needed was the author's permission.