The Enid Blyton Society

Anita Bensoussane wrote:[I recall borrowing a book from the library in the 1980s which was about a boy whose parents adopted a little brother for him. He was told that the little brother was eight years old but gradually began to suspect that he was older. It turned out that he was actually fifteen (and therefore an older brother) but was disabled in a way that made him appear younger.

Anita

I saw a TV programme about that family, which I found compelling viewing even if I now can't remember the title!

Viv

That's interesting, Viv. I actually thought it was a fiction book, but of course it's possible that it was based on a true story.

Anita

Kitty wrote:There are few things that rile me more than those who suggest children's literature should somehow be policed so that children may only read about situations they can 'identify' with. Thankfully it seems to have settled down a bit now. When I was little there seemed to be a concerted effort from booksellers and the school library to make us read as much misery fiction as possible

Misery fiction is something that I was encouraged to read at school, it was depressing and tedious beyond belief, consisting largely of stories about children in tower blocks who got screamed at by their mothers. This may well have New English Library material which was very popular as a teaching aid in the 1970's.

I can certainly remember titles such as Skinhead and Boot Boys by Richard Allen sitting on the same shelves as the works of Enid Blyton, Anthony Buckeridge and Richmal Crompton. What a surreal place my primary school must have been!

Kitty wrote: All that said, I do have vague notions of a very peculiar book about a family where the father had a nervous breakdown that became a cult classic for all the wrong reasons among one or two of us little monsters I'd quite like to reread it just for the nostalgia factor, but cannot remember enough to ever find it again!

That sort of reminds me of a book we studied at school - a play, actually, I think: 'Death of a salesman' by Arthur Miller.

We also did plenty of other things that were depressing: Lord of the Flies, The Chocolate War, Across the Barracades, one flew over the cuckoo's nest... I never identified with any of them!

Anita: I took geography at 'o' level and it was all about rock formations and table top mountains and glaciers etc. We hardly ever did anything about different countries or produce etc, as my parents had done when they did geography back in the early 1950's.

Ah, O'level geography, we had a physical paper and a human (?) paper. I remember I drew a sketch map of the Khomtaie (sp?) tea plantation in India!

We had teachers that got very enthusiastic about ox bow lakes. Stalactites and Stalagmites, but I knew about these from Enid Blyton! 'Tite's hung down like tights on a washing like and 'mites' were on the bottom as mites crawled along the ground!

As for misery fiction we had an old school teacher who favoured fiction set in WW2 (I loved it) 'The Machine Gunners' and some short stories 'The good six pen'orth' etc.

Does anyone remember 'Tim and and hidden people' Shelagh Mcullough (sp)?, a reading scheme? Echoes of Harry Potter. Tim and his magic cat Sebastian.

To get slightly back on topic, the story of Biddy Baxter and The Mystery of the Two Identical Letters from Enid Blyton is quite an old one. I must have read about this in a newspaper or magazine article many years ago. The story is very much unchanged. Having received two identical letters from Enid Blyton as a child, Miss Baxter decreed that no viewer who ever wrote to Blue Peter should ever suffer the same fate.

I find it incredible that children who wrote to Enid Blyton received handwritten replies. Was that really the case, or were the letters actually fascimiles with varying content that were signed en-mass? One can only conclude that Miss Blyton had an iron sense of self discipline and infinite patience to deal with such a task.

Biddy Baxter was perhaps in very much the same mould as Enid Blyton, certainly not a person to suffer fools easily. During her reign on Blue Peter she was feared, but at the same time hugely respected.

The letter I received from Enid Blyton when I was eleven was most certainly written personally to me! I had told her how I fell and winded myself when playing "Faraway Tree" with my sisters with chairs as the branches and our old kitchen table as the land at the top. As I jumped from one chair to the next it slipped and I fell across the side of the chair in front banging myself quite hard across my then, fortunately, still flat chest! She wrote back saying she hoped I hadn't bruised myself too badly. The letter was two sides of paper in normal fountain pen ink. I treasured it for years and don't recall throwing it away but I haven't seen it for ages! Maybe I shall find it again one day.

It would be lovely if you could find it one day, Daisy, and maybe allow it to be reprinted in one of the EB Journals so that we could all read it!

Belly wrote: 'Tite's hung down like tights on a washing like and 'mites' were on the bottom as mites crawled along the ground!

I hadn't heard that one before!

It's lovely to hear that you received a handwritten letter from Enid Blyton, Daisy! I believe that Enid Blyton devoted Sundays to letter-writing, as well as writing a few letters on other days when she had time. When she went on holiday to Dorset, she would even have letters forwarded from Green Hedges to her hotel so she could reply to them. She obviously enjoyed getting to know her fans but couldn't answer every single letter. In her editorials in Enid Blyton's Magazine, she often apologises for not being able to write replies to all letters received from readers.

Anita

Daisy wrote: I treasured it for years and don't recall throwing it away but I haven't seen it for ages! Maybe I shall find it again one day.

I do hope you find your letter one day Daisy. What a lovely treasure to have.

How lucky you are Daisy, to have a letter from Enid herself. Hope you can find it again!

Yes that must really be a lovely thing to have Daisy. If you find it again be sure to have it framed or something so you dont lose it again.

I didn't realise that receiving the identical letter left Biddy Baxter in tears..

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Belly wrote:
As I child I used to write to the BBC pestering them to put televise various EB books. I used to get a printed card in reply with the message 'thank you for your letter, we have passed it on to the people who plan the programmes, it was nice of you to write'.

My friend and I decided they might take more notice of us if we wrote pretending to be an adult male with the title 'Dr'. Interestingly we often got a few pages back when we adopted this approach and even one hand written letter. We used a typewriter as our 8 year old handwriting we realised was a bit of a give away! We never one got a stock printed card!!

Very ingenious! Even though this post is a few years old it really made me chuckle!