What Enid Blyton book are you reading right NOW!

[Katharine]

I'm just about to start reading Hello, Mr Twiddle. I can't remember if I've read it before, but I'm familiar with his stories, so am looking forward to reading something not too challenging. Life has been quite busy for me recently and I've had a number of academic pieces to read recently, so it will be nice to have something that doesn't require too much brain power to understand.

As I've mentioned before, I have a large number of books and am slowly cataloguing them, but don't know exactly what I own at the moment. When looking for a book to start reading, I picked up the Mr Twiddle book, and then as I glanced at the shelves, I spotted an identical copy on the next shelf along! My defence is that I think I bought one copy in a charity shop, and then was given a number of Enid Blyton books afterwards by someone who was having a turnout.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I bet most book-collectors have a few doubles on their shelves. I've probably got doubles of several Ladybird books!

I like Mr. Twiddle - he's exasperating but quite endearing in some ways, though he could be more tolerant of his wife's cat!

[Bertie]

Yes, as a cat lover that was my biggest gripe about him!

I only read the books for the first time in the last year or two. As you say, he's frustrating but also entertaining and endearing (to a point). But I really didn't like his attitude and behaviour towards the cat!

Although, to be honest, I've always got the feeling that Enid was much more of a dog person and certainly seems to portray them much more positively, and much more of a 'pet', than she does cats - who mostly just seem to pop up to be tripped over by humans or chased by dogs, and to spit angrily in response! Not many are described like all the loving cats I've had as pets.

[Bertie]

As I mentioned on the Find Outers quiz thread, I've been reading Spiteful Letters...

Whenever I re-read this, one thing that always strikes me is Enid having Pip describe Mrs Moon as a 'spiteful old tell tale' so early in the book.

I know writers like to put little clues in there at times, I assume choosing to use the word 'spiteful' about the one who turns out to be the 'spiteful letter writer' so early in the book was one of those clues? But it always feels a little early for such a big hint.

[Courtenay]

Although, to be honest, I've always got the feeling that Enid was much more of a dog person and certainly seems to portray them much more positively, and much more of a 'pet', than she does cats - who mostly just seem to pop up to be tripped over by humans or chased by dogs, and to spit angrily in response! Not many are described like all the loving cats I've had as pets.

I don't know about that — while Enid does have more positively portrayed dogs than cats overall, there are several good cat characters I can think of in her books. The best example that springs to mind is Sooty, Mr Pink-Whistle's cat, who can talk and who regularly helps Pink-Whistle in his work of putting wrong things right. Mind you, Enid doesn't seem to have been certain about Sooty's gender, as Sooty is a he in some stories and a she in others!

Another cat I've always remembered is Cinders in The Wishing-Chair Again — a black cat with "eyes as green as traffic lights"! He belongs to a friendly magician, Mr Spells, and together they help Peter and Mollie and Chinky a couple of times during their adventures. There's also a vignette of a friendly cat in one of Enid's later books, Adventure of the Strange Ruby — when the main girl character, Tessa, is exploring the mysterious mansion of Brinkin Towers in search of her kidnapped friends, she hides herself in a cupboard, falls asleep for a time and wakes to find the cat happily curled up on her lap. It's a cosy scene at a tense point in the story and I was always disappointed that we never found out what happened to that cat after the villains were caught! And in the Noddy books, Big-Ears has a cat too — she doesn't come into the stories very much, as far as I recall, but I don't think she's ever portrayed as bad-tempered or troublesome.

There aren't all that many cats compared to dogs in Enid's stories overall, it's true — I'm guessing that's partly because it simply wouldn't be realistic for a cat to take on the kinds of roles her major dog characters have, like Timmy or Buster or Loony or Lucky! But she had both dogs and cats as pets of her own throughout her life, as you can see from her "Teachers World" letters to young readers (most of these are available on this website and Anita has been posting a link to one each week for several years now). As far as I can tell from those, she definitely loved her cats and she nearly always comments positively on what they're doing from week to week, especially when they had kittens and all kinds of antics would ensue. Mind you, she never gave any of them the starring role she gave to her dog Bobs, who also "wrote" his own letter to her audience each week! So I do get the impression that she preferred dogs overall, but she loved cats as well and certainly didn't have anything serious against them.

[Bertie]

That's interesting, Courtenay, thanks for all that info.

I've only read (and read and read!) most of her Mystery and Adventure stories, rather than any of the younger / Fantasy ones - so I didn't know about most of those cats you mention.

In the mystery / adventure books, most cats that do feature tend to be quite bad tempered or aloof, rather than friendly and loving like the dogs. Though, as you say, they need to have dogs as the main pet so they can help protect the children. And animals like monkeys and talking parrots offer more scope for humour. But good to know Enid seemed to be fond of cats in real life.

[Anita Bensoussane]

The book Bimbo and Topsy features some of Enid Blyton's own cats (and some of her dogs - and her two daughters). Bimbo was a Siamese cat and he seems to have appealed to Enid partly because he was rather like a dog! She writes in The Story of My Life:

I couldn't tell you how many cats and kittens I have had since I was grown up. I love Siamese cats, with their creamy coats, dark brown points and strange, brilliant blue eyes. I bred them for years, and many a time I have had as many as ten or twelve small Siamese kittens racing about, plaguing the life out of Bobs or Sandy. They are most amusing, and are really more like dogs than cats.

They look a bit like monkeys, they act rather like squirrels in the way they sit up and hold things, they have some of the nature of a dog - and yet they are cats! What a peculiar mixture! The one I have now, Bimbo, licks me like a dog, and follows me about like a dog too.

He will go after a little ball and bring it back in his mouth. I say "Drop it!" and he drops it for me to throw. He will hunt for anything I have hidden till he finds it. He is really beautiful.

I have had other cats, of course - tabby ones - a magnificent ginger one called Rufus - a black one with white socks. But Bimbo is the cleverest of them all.

Enid had looked after a stray cat in the garden shed for a few weeks when she was a child, calling it Chippy. However, when her parents discovered it they wouldn't let her keep it. Her book The Birthday Kitten involves children keeping a kitten in secret.

Granny in The Children at Green Meadows is very fond of her cat, Mr. Black. He's described as "big and solemn and high-and-mighty" but we're told that Granny "loved him with all her heart". As for Elizabeth Farrell in House-at-the-Corner, when she begins writing stories for the newspaper her first one is called 'The Story of the Thirteen Cats'.

[Anita Bensoussane]

As I mentioned on the Find Outers quiz thread, I've been reading Spiteful Letters...

Whenever I re-read this, one thing that always strikes me is Enid having Pip describe Mrs Moon as a 'spiteful old tell tale' so early in the book.

I know writers like to put little clues in there at times, I assume choosing to use the word 'spiteful' about the one who turns out to be the 'spiteful letter writer' so early in the book was one of those clues? But it always feels a little early for such a big hint.

I tend to agree, Bertie, that it's odd for the word "spiteful" to be used at an early stage about the culprit when "Spiteful Letters" is in the title. I imagine this was a case of Enid Blyton writing in full flow, with the word "spiteful" slipping out almost unconsciously to describe Mrs. Moon. Of course, Enid Blyton didn't necessarily know until later that she was going to use that word in the title.

[Bertie]

That's very interesting about the cats in Enid's life, Anita.

Clearly Enid did love cats (though seems to favour dogs), and it sounds like her love is reflected in a lot of the younger stories or magazines that I've never read.

As I said. I've only read the many mystery / adventure books of hers, and in those most of their appearances are limited to less positive roles - being aloof, lying in wait to 'deliberately' trip up the main characters, spitting bad temperedly, etc. So I didn't pick up positive vibes with Enid and cats. But good to know that she's positive about them elsewhere, and was clearly fond of them in real life.

[Nair Snehalatha]

Reading five on a hike together-- oneof my best books in the Five series-- Looking at the whole thing, Two trees and Gloomy Water are really eerie places--- Enid Blyton, being what she is does not mention anything negative about the place except for its loneliness
-- and I love her more for that-- whereas other authors would talked about unearthly elements dwelling there--

[Katharine]

Five on a Hike was the last book I read - it's always been one of my favourites and it certainly didn't disappoint this time around.

[Bertie]

I've always found Five on a Hike one of my least favourite of the FF books - certainly in comparison to the other books in the first dozen or so. Though it stands up better compared to some of the later ones.

But I know from mentioning that before just how popular the book seems to be on here, so I must give it another read sometime. Though I don't think that'll make much of a difference, as a lot depends whether you enjoy the 'atmospheric' feel of the book. And I never have, really. Not in comparison to the feel of many of the others, anyway. Still, I'll definitely give it another go soon.

[GloomyGraham]

I like 'On a Hike' but it does have an unusual gloomy (Waters?) feeling throughout with unfriendly farmers and policeman as opposed to the usual helpful ones.

There aren't too many nice people in the story (except the man who fixes Timmy's leg) or nice places to stay overnight. And not enough ices!

[GloomyGraham]

Regarding cats, I just re-read 'The Boy Who Wanted A Dog' and even though canines are his first love and the main focus of the book, it's his rescue of a stray, injured cat that helps to get him a dog.

Like Enid, he seems to love all kinds of animals.

[Debbie]

I've just finished re-reading Five on a Hike and what always strikes me is the hurriedness of it.
It's a half term adventure, which, being a boarding school, may well have just been a long weekend. You don't get the building up of the "lovely long holiday what shall we do" and at the end they're already thinking about being back at school shortly. It could probably have been done, much less atmospherically, as a short story.

It's one of my favourites, not least because Dick and Anne alone gives them the unusual chance to shine; normally they are overshadowed by Julian and George.
But the atmosphere is wonderful. Just the names give such a feeling to the place, but also with everything from Dirty Dick's barn, which contrasts with the farmhouse they were meant to stay in, and the abandoned building, the still water that they dive into.