The Enid Blyton Society

pete9012S wrote:

For some reason I'm starting to see (and hear) this...

This is my second attempt,before Rob comes along and trumps me.

I like it, Pete.

I don't like the cover of the new hardback but I would like to see Eileen Soper's illustrations in colour. It would be great if shillings and pence were returned to all Enid's stories.

Courtenay wrote:

pete9012S wrote:I really would love to see her internals in full colour.
Maybe someone skilled and artistic like Rob could have a bash?

(Oh hang on, now I come to think about it... what on earth is Pete up to, wanting to see Betty Maxey's internals?? )

pete9012S wrote:Which Betty Maxey pic would be best to colour in? I've found some coloured pencils and felt tips.



Do not adjust your set!

My eyes! I can't decide which is harder to look at, the lurid green or the luminous yellow . It proves one thing though, those drawings are plain unclear no matter what colour their done in, as like a naughty schoolboy they've just received too many lines . There's something strange about Anne's bird claw hand too...

pete9012S wrote:

This is my second attempt,before Rob comes along and trumps me.

That is a far better illustration without so many lines, looks much softer and more realistic. Someone should have told that artist that less is more.

Tony Summerfield wrote:
Something that might cheer people up is that I was asked recently if I could provide some original text for short stories as they were keen to put the currency back into shillings and pence in future books.

Fabulous!!!

I was thinking of an alternative version of Donovan's Colours:

Yellow is the color of my true love's hair
In the mornin', when we rise
In the mornin', when we rise
That's the time, that's the time
I love the best

Yellow's the color of the sky
In the mornin', when we rise
In the mornin', when we rise
That's the time, that's the time
I love the best

Yellow's the color of the sparklin' corn
In the mornin', when we rise
In the mornin', when we rise
That's the time, that's the time
I love the best

Yellow's the color of the new-mown grass

etc

Pete's and Nigel's talents never cease to amaze! How nice to know that real Enid Blyton Famous Fives (apart from the edits) will appear on the shelves instead of those dreadful other books.

Courtenay wrote:Why are there aeroplanes on the cover of the new Five Run Away Together??? Maybe some dunderhead in the design department mixed it up with The Valley of Adventure...

lol I was just thinking 'why are there anchors on the cover of Five Go Adventuring Again'?

For some inexplicable reason, this thread completely passed me by in June.

I too wondered why there are aeroplanes on 'Five Run Away Together' - rather bizarre...but I guess the publishers are thinking of wartime emblems, as these books were published in wartime.

I've never been too impressed by the idea of Eileen Soper's illustrations appearing in colour. I have some of the millennial paperbacks with coloured-in Eileen Soper illustrations, and I'm not a fan. The colouring isn't exactly artistic, and adds nothing to the illustrations, in my view. They were meant to be in black and white, and as Eileen didn't colour them herself, they don't have a genuine look. If they had been done in the style of Eileen's water-colour illustrations for various books, then fine, but I dislike the pencil-crayon ones.

Good news about returning some of the currency etc to shillings and pence in some book though! I'm currently reading The Naughtiest Girl books, and having the money in its original values really adds greatly to the experience!

By the way, Pete - colouring Betty Maxey's illustrations, it would be difficult to 'keep in the lines' - because there aren't any!

I have been told by the powers that be at Hodders that they have changed their minds on this and the illustrations are no longer going to be in colour. Although they have changed the details on their own website, unfortunately Amazon are still talking about colour. This will be the sixth different printing of Five on a Treasure Island in the last two years and three of these have been hardbacks.

Thank you for the update, Tony.

I doubt the collectors market is large enough for this continual introduction of new editions to be a cynical sales ploy so it screams that Hodders don't really seem to know what their strategy is at the moment.