The Faraway Tree

When I was a child, The Faraway Tree books by Enid Blyton were my absolute favourites. I’ve recently started reading them to The Boy after a chance find of the collection in our local charity shop. (where I had gone to hand in 2 bags of books - why do I always fail to come away empty handed?) This is our first adventure into non picture-book storytelling, and I’m quite surprised at how taken he is with it all. I love how he has to pull his ideas from the words and his own head rather than being guided by the pictures on a page. It makes for interesting discussions. We’ve not even made it up the Faraway Tree yet, and he’s already full of ideas of what magical creatures Jo, Bessie and Fanny might meet next. I think he might actually puke with excitement when they eventually meet MoonFace, as I’ve been telling him about some of the characters and he is just fascinated by the strange man with a moon for a face on the back of the book. He was none too pleased when we finished our first chapter and there had been no mention of him.
My favourite of the collection was The Enchanted Wood. I had a beautiful illustrated version when I was younger which I am desperate to try and find again. It may actually still be in my mum’s loft, so if I can get over my fear of heights I might take a torch up there and have a hunt for it one day. I was searching for some illustrations to add to this post and came across a photo of the cover of the edition I had (1979 Dean reprint) and it instantly brought a load of lovely childhood memories flooding back to me.
I used to read this every single night in my bed, sometimes by torchlight after my light had been turned out, and as soon as I finished I’d go back and re-read my favourite parts before starting all over again. The illustrations are just beautiful and really add to the magic, so I would love to find for The Boy to experience too.
Oh, and in tonight’s chapter we met the brownies for the first time. He jumped in with “Oh, I love brownies, sure I do mummy?” and so I had to explain they weren’t the chocolate kind you ate. I do still wonder if in his head he pictures lots of little baked chocolate sponges running around their toadstools in a magical forest.













