The Enid Blyton Society

I'm trying to remember where I read this story.(possibly in one of Enid Blyton's fortnightly magazines)
I really like it.
I think a mother reminds a young girl to clean her bicycle before her father gets home.

Instead of just getting the job done and over with,she decides to procrastinate,then hides her bike,then says someone has borrowed it,then it was stolen,people are taken to hospital (according to her)as her covering over the lack of cleaning her bike just keep getting bigger and bigger!

Anyone remember it??

Gosh - I've only ever read that story once Pete, as an adult, and I too have been unable to remember where I read it! It's a great story and I'd like to find it again. It's possible that I came across it in an issue of Enid Blyton's Magazine, though I can't be certain.

The final words of your post - "keep getting bigger and bigger" - must have set cogs turning in my mind, Pete, as I suddenly remembered that the story was called 'It Got Bigger and Bigger!' A quick check in the Cave told me that it appeared in Enid Blyton's Magazine Volume 2, Number 20. A very interesting story full of trouble and tension. The girl who doesn't clean her bicycle (Sally) reads a Famous Five book in bed.

With many,many thanks to Anita for helping me to find this story again.
I thought I was going to have to read the whole set of Fortnightly Magazines Magazines until I found it!

I think it is a marvellous tale - showing not only that it really is best to get things done right away,but also the consequences of trying to cover up for things you know you should have done sooner.

Here is a short excerpt from the magazine it appeared in back in 1954.See what you think of the story and Sally's actions....

I think checking the amazing cave,this is the only place this story has appeared to date.


Short Story - It Got Bigger And Bigger 1954

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Could the exciting Famous Five book Sally got engrossed in have been Five Go to Mystery Moor
First Published in 1954 by Hodder & Stoughton??

pete9012S wrote:Here is a short excerpt from the magazine it appeared in back in 1954.See what you think of the story and Sally's actions....
[...]
Short Story - It Got Bigger And Bigger 1954

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     Just read it - and it *does* keep you reading, right up to the end.
     And it doesn't have the usual Blytonian happy ending, either. I might have half-wondered whether Sally would get an awful time as she was ticked off for her dishonesty and neglect, and then, perhaps after a while, get another bicycle. But no - she didn't, and she just had to struggle, step by painful step, to try to improve her ways.

pete9012S wrote:I think checking the amazing cave,this is the only place this story has appeared to date.

     And yet I have a feeling I have read it somewhere, many, many years ago - and I certainly haven't ever read that magazine it was in. I wonder if it is in some collection, and I once saw that collection in a book-shop and read it there as I examined it presumably to decide whether to buy it. (I didn't; I never really got involved in collecting the short stories like I did some of the novels - but it didn't stop me looking at them occasionally if I saw them in book-shops.)

pete9012S wrote:Could the exciting Famous Five book Sally got engrossed in have been Five Go to Mystery Moor
First Published in 1954 by Hodder & Stoughton??

     No clue is given, so I suppose this suggestion arises simply from being current at the time of the short story.
     I've always tended to see it as a bit cheap, not quite legitimate somehow, for an author to do an early form of product placement: advertising their own work in other work they produce.

Regards, Michael.

Yes, what a compelling little story! Mind you, I've read other Enid Blyton stories that don't have a happy ending — she obviously knew that sometimes, the moral of a story has more impact if the wrongdoer is left hurting at the end instead of having everything come right again too quickly. It certainly dispels the idea that all Enid's stories are sunny and sugar-coated without anything really challenging or thought-provoking!

I've never seen that story before, but having just read it, I feel it's Enid Blyton at her best.

There are a few Enid Blyton short stories I find quite chilling, though I rather enjoy feeling unsettled and being made to ponder. 'The Boy Who Was Too Clever' has a most unexpected and disquieting ending, while 'The Packet of Sweets' and 'The Other Little Boy' are frightening even though things ultimately work out okay. The world of Enid Blyton can at times be alarming and painful, but she invariably gives her characters (and her readers) hope - and the chance to learn a valuable lesson. Children reading her stories encounter distress and anxiety but they also see problems being resolved and people making a fresh start. Overall, the tales are reassuring. Even in 'It Got Bigger and Bigger', Sally is striving to regain her parents' trust and we're sure that she will succeed and will become more responsible than she was before.