Who grew up reading Enid Blyton books?

[OldFred]

Just seen that The Magic Faraway Tree movie is to be released in the UK on 27 March 2026 🙂

I will hold judgement until I've seen it on it compares to the books but as a child, I devoured EB books.
I loved them all but TMFT holds a special place in my heart so fingers crossed!

I know EB books rightly so have had their fair share of criticism but (immigrant) childhood me just took them at face value, and as an adult and parent, my enduring love for them remains.
The Mini Old Freds have inherited all my copies and love them too.

What are your favourite EB books?
(Hoping to come across some I've not heard of!)

Noddy mostly, and Sunny Stories. My Dad brought it home for me each week.
I read The Far Away Tree to my GCs - several times!

Absolutely loved them for Christmas last year my husband bought me the entire faraway tree collection it was my best present. My favourites as well were the naughtiest girl (Amelia Jane) ❤️

I also loved EB (but realise they were of the time and found it sad when her children claimed she wasn’t a nice person/mother.)
I loved Famous Five, st Claire’s, Mallory towers and also five find outers and dog I think the series was called?
they remind me of childhood as my dad used to to read them to us

OK... so Shakespeare was dirty, and Blyton was dirty... any more?!

I loved the famous five so much! I always remember the deputy head at primary school trying to put me off reading them though. Surely reading those was better than not reading at all!

I loved them. The famous five and the secret seven...I have always wanted to replicate their picnics. Whole cakes and lashings of ginger beer.

And All Aboard, another favourite.

Arthur Ransome also.

I used to love The Secret Seven when I was little. Much later in life I was working as a TA in a year 5 class and I was listening to children read 1 to 1 with me. One girl was reading a Secret Seven book and I told her how I had loved them when I was her age. She read to me and I asked her what she thought would happen next. She burst out laughing and said “Mrs …. ! You know what happens, you read the book!”
“Yes I did” I replied “but it was about 40 years ago!”

I absolutely loved The Magic Faraway Tree in primary school aged 10 and read it over and over.

I thought her name was 'Grid Blyton' from her signature on the books. I went to the librarian at my school to ask for other books by Grid Blyton and she had no clue who I meant! 😕

Love Enid Blyton stories especially Five Find-Outers and Dog which I think are amusing and cleverly written.

My favourite was naughty amelia Jane ❤️

Mr Pinkwhistle sounds like a pervert!

In fairness, so does Mr Meddle!

You're not wrong 😂

Mr Twiddle sounds somewhat dodgy too, to my perverted ears

It took me a while to work out it was Enid, too.

I've started a Malcolm Saville thread here: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5448530-who-grew-up-reading-malcolm-saville-books

I absolutely loved The Magic Faraway Tree and Mallory Towers by EB.

Loved the famous five series. So pleased my parents introduced me to reading when I was younger. I still prefer it over using a device any day ..

The Naughtiest Girl was called Elizabeth and was in a short series of school books (similar style as St Clare's and Malory Towers).

Amelia Jane - confusingly often also referred to as 'Naughty Amelia Jane' - was a series for much younger readers, set in a children's playroom, with Amelia being a big unkind doll who kept playing mean tricks on the other (much smaller) toys who lived there.

Which one did you mean? Or did you mean both?

I thought the Naughtiest Girl books were quite strange. All punishments decided by a sort of pupil council presided over by the head boy and girl, monitors with lots of disciplinary powers, all pocket money handed in, everyone gets a token amount for stamps, and you need to ask for anything else you want and it’s voted on by your peers.

Yes, I always found it really odd too - so extremely different from EB's other more traditional school series. I thought the pendulum swung much too far the other way, to a point where the teachers and other adults were neglectful.

It was the closest to Lord of the Flies that Blyton ever came! I wonder what the reality was at the actual school that it was based on?

It was based on Summerhill in Suffolk, England.

It still exists:

A.S. Neill Summerhill School Suffolk

Thanks. I knew the name of it but didn't know much else about it or whether it was still going. I suppose I could have not been lazy and looked online!

Not to derail this lovely thread, but if anybody on here has been there as a child or knows somebody who has, I'd be interested to know what their experiences of that model were.

@IAmKerplunk

Oh that makes me feel so sad that you lost your mum so young. But she sounds so lovely looking through all the charity shops with her list in hand searching for books for you!

Yep I remember Milly Molly Mandy and Little Friend Susan and was it Billy Blunt?