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!)

Frederick Algernon Trotteville!

Ooh I was close - ish! 🤣

What’s that one where they climb up a toffee tower with saucepans?

My mum had a load of them. So magical!

I loved Mrs Pepperpot too.
Also
Heidi
Shallows and Amazons (Titty!)
The Chronicles of Narnia (then all the Tolkien books which were my brother's)
All the Little House books
What Katy Did
Anastasia Krupnik (American)
Brambly Hedge ❤️

Has anyone read Half Magic/Knights Castle/Magic By the Lake by Edward Eager?
I loved these (and still have them)

Then graduated onto Sweet Valley High and Judy Blumes 😄

I basically read anything and everything.
What a great treat it was to settle down with a book and just get totally absorbed.

Ooh sweet valley high - was that with the cheerleading twins?

I did because it's all we had in the house when I was a child so I devoured them i remember one in particular called six bad boys it was about a group of boys who get into trouble when a boy from a single parent family leads the nice middle class children astray! I also remember another story about a boy who keeps forgetting to take handkerchief to school. Neither of them would be suitable for children today or even for my children's generation.
When I re-read some Enid Blyton as an adult I realised how badly they were written and understood why it took me so long to appreciate good literature.
Some of her plots are very exciting for children her storytelling skills are good and the books are easy to read but the language is too simplistic, formulaic and just not very good.

The best feeling!

Thank you for this thread - going to dig out some of my old books for some gentle cosy reading

Elizabeth and Jessica!
They'd fit right into the MN perfect family mindset with their tall strapping athletic older brother Steven 😆

I loved Enid Blyton books, particularly Malory Towers and St Clare’s. But I read every Enid Blyton book I could get my hands on.

I also loved Judy Blume and Sweet Valley.

Yes! They seemed so glamorous and a lot of stuff about boys in the books - it made me wish I went high school in America 🤣

I loved naughtiest girl the best. My own dc loved Secret 7, famous 5, Cherrytree farm and the Rockingdown mystery.

And they all seemed to be driving around in little expensive sports cars at the age of 16 and have tall, handsome strapping athletic boyfriends too, nothing like the real teenage boys I grew up with, who all resembled Adrian Mole 😂 (another great read)

I loved them.
I saw Mr Galliano’s Circus in a charity shop today, with a jolt of recognition that took me right back to childhood. Had forgotten all about that one.

she was crazily prolific, wasn’t she …

Then they made a Sweet Valley High tv series in the 90s and the twins had a red Jeep. I was so jealous! I always wanted to be a twin.

Look right down any crowded hall, you’ll see there’s a beauty standing, is she really everywhere, or a reflection?

Literary crushes: Bill Smugs and Barney for me! The Adventure Series was brilliant but I also loved the Rilloby Fair Mystery, which had the mad story about the green hands gang that follows Snubby everywhere he goes.Some real humour in that one!

The five find outers were entertaining, too, but I'm one of the few to prefer St Clare's to Malory Towers. It's rougher around the edges and not as well strucutred, but it has more heart. MT is more like a military correctional facility with a very unbending, austere Head who seems to think the bullying that's rife in that place is a-okay (poor Gwen!) St Clare's isn't as much a place of beauty as MT, but it's much more human and has a head mistress who actually sees her students as people.

The Cherry Tree, Mistletoe and Willow Farm books were gorgeous. Blyton is at her best when writing about nature.

What Katy did at School is one of my all-time favourite school stories. Rose Red was an awesome character.

The others were the Trebizon series with the plagiarising Elizabeth Exton and the really moving, nuanced relationship between Rebecca Mason and the principal (whose career she inadvertently saves).

I also love all the surfing and water sports.

Ha ha we were sold a dream by SVH and then Beverley Hills 90210 about what boys looked like in high school where the sun was always shining! I remember at the start of the school summer holidays my friends and I would hope that come September the boys in our class would have miraculously turned into the strapping athletes that American fiction kept showing us 🤣

Alongthetowpath · Today 14:31
I loved Malory Towers. My fave scene was where Mary Lou goes out in the rain to post a parcel for one of the other girls, think she was called Daphne or Deirdre or something

I can’t remember whether it was Malory Towers or St Clare’s but i remember a very enjoyable scene in which a teacher who is constantly mocking a girl for writing poetry tells the girls to write a poem for homework. Sure enough the teacher pours scorn on the aspiring poet’s efforts.
Only to be told that actually the poem she has handed in is by Matthew Arnold (I think - that may be wrong, but anyway by a well respected poet).

Famous Five and Mallory Towers were my absolute favourites. I read them over and over as they were my comfort & escape (was pretty unhappy growing up). I was heartbroken the day my dad came into my room with a box and told me to get rid of them all as they weren't intellectually challenging enough (regardless of the fact I was an avid reader of many different genre). And yes, it still makes me sad to think about it now.

Not just rationing, but during the actual war! She was as prolific as ever. The first St Clare’s book was published in 1941 and they kept coming annually, or even more often, after that, and several of the the Famous Five books, the ‘Secret’ series, the ‘Adventure’ series, the Faraway Tree books and the Naughtiest Girl books were all published during the war — total escapism and pigging out on luxury foods. The first Malory Towers book came out in 1946.

Me, I definitely had a misspent* childhood reading Enid Blyton (and Malcolm Saville).

*because I could have been learning to do something useful like knitting 😍

My local library used to have a reading scheme and they didn't include Enid Blyton because they weren't good enough.

Mid sixties baby here, was reading them all through the 70s. and far beyond Secret Seven, Famous Five, the Adventure series, the FinderOuters, Six cousins , Secret series...my hero and role model was George

I don’t like this snobby attitude towards certain books (setting aside the era they were written) They gave millions of children a love of reading and imagination - even today teachers say they aren’t fussed what kids are reading they just want them to find the love of reading.