Is The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton the best children’s book ever?

IT WAS a time when “queer” meant “odd” and “Dick” or “Fanny” were best mates. Crack out the pop biscuits and reminisce about Enid Blyton’s classic The Magic Faraway Tree.

Is this the best kids’ book ever?

IT HERALDS from a time when “queer” meant “odd” and when kids were allowed to run wild in the woods without their parents getting a stern phone call from DOCS.

It was racist, xenophobic, sexist, snobbish and saw no irony in the enthusiastic relationship between two cousins called Dick and Fanny.

Likewise, it was anachronistic, poorly written, implausible and repetitive. But how much did we love — and continue to love — The Magic Faraway Tree?

As Sam Mendes’ production company prepares to turn the beloved book into a film — going from Bond to Blyton shows commendable versatility — here are 12 observations about one of the best-selling children’s books of all time.

PIRATE: Erin McAuley (l) with sister Claire reading book |The Magic Faraway Tree| by Enid Blyton. children child

1. Enid Blyton hated kids. Particularly her own. She was all right to her eldest, but younger daughter Imogen would later recall she was “arrogant, insecure, pretentious and without a trace of maternal instinct”. Ouch.

2. That said, she did enjoy a game of naked tennis.

3. Mr Whatzisname was actually the hero. Sure, Moonface got all the glory, Silky was the eye candy, Dame Washalot had a demented laundry habit and The Saucepan Man could’ve saved himself a lot of trouble by installing a pot cupboard, but Mr Whatzisname got to sleep a lot. He didn’t have to go up to the lands at the top of the tree or slide down the slippery dip which, let’s be honest, was installed for Moonface’s sexual gratification.

4. The food was ace. Toffee shocks, lemonade and pop biscuits which, incidentally, you can make for your kids by pressing Fizz Wizz into homemade cookies. Only the google buns were duds — even a year 2 kid could tell you it’s gastronomically impossible to fill a currant with sherbet so it “frothed out and filled your mouth with fine bubbles that tasted delicious”. Enid was clearly on the wacky weed that day.

5. Kate Winslet, former wife of Sam Mendes, voiced the audiobook of the series, by which time Jo, Bessie and Fanny had been renamed Joe, Beth and Frannie. Dick had also been changed to Rick. No idea why.

6. The Folk of the Faraway Tree — the third in the series — was written in 1946 and featured a rude, snoopy and suspicious girl called Connie. So vile was this child that no one has called their daughter Connie ever since. In fact, Connie is arguably the most gifted child in a Blyton novel, showing scepticism and critical thinking when she tells the other children that Moonface is not real.

The Folk of the Faraway Tree.

Book cover. The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton

7. Did you notice no one goes to the toilet ever? Not in the Faraway series — The Enchanted Wood, The Magic Faraway Tree and The Folk of The Faraway Tree — or, indeed, in any other of Blyton’s 753 books. Those poor kids must’ve had the most appalling urinary tract infections.

8. The Land of Do-As-You-Please is the basis for a treatise on anarchy in the 1980s novel V for Vendetta. No, me neither.

9. Moonface could’ve won the Wilkinson Award for architecture. His home featured a curved bed, a curved table and two curved chairs yet there is no mention throughout the novels of him having crippling scoliosis.

10. Blyton bashing was a thing. The BBC kept her off its airwaves for nearly 30 years because, according to execs, she was “a tenacious second-rater”. Rich criticism of a self-financed entertainer by a taxpayer-funded colossus that pumped out 30 years of Grange Hill – the show that taught every school kid how to become a delinquent.

11. Seven years passed between the publication of the first book in 1939 and the last in 1946 but the children never grew up or went through puberty. Kudos to JK Rowling, who allowed Harry Potter’s voice to break and Hermione Granger to momentarily show Princess Bitchface tendencies.

12. Helena Bonham Carter, who played Enid in a cracking biopic, believes she was both “appealing and appalling”. As she says: “When you write for very young children what they want is something familiar and safe and stereotyped. Lots of subtle and very intelligent friends of mine say, ‘Thank God for Blyton, she brought me up’.” And that, dear reader, is why her

delightfully queer little folk have shifted 600 million copies.

Originally published as Is The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton the best children’s book ever?