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Wednesday, March 06, 2013

Ponderings on my favourite Children's author - Enid Blyton

I have been re-reading a lot more EB every since D started reading them, and I was thinking today as to why it was/is such a fascination for me and other random take-offs from it. So here are all the grand facts I arrived at:

  • I'm a big fan of the Fantasy Genre - Wheel of Time became my all-time favourite series when I discovered it rather late a couple of years back, and the person who finished the series - Brandon Sanderson is definitely my favourite current author and I will pick up any of his books that came out. I thought about it, and realized that Enid Blyton was probably my first ever exposure to this kind of writing. Ardent Fantasy fans don't kill me! But creating a world different from the one we live in, that you sometimes wish could be true - isn't that what this genre is all about ? :).

  • Enid Blyton has written most or probably all of her stories especially the fairyland related ones with nearly only children as main characters. I was thinking - as an adult - if a fairy came up and spoke to me, I would probably be searching desperately for the wires holding her up. So yeah, kids are the only ones who still have that sense of wonder and can believably speak to fairies or follow a caterpillar or gnome to where they are taken. Makes complete sense.

  • She had this ability to make food sound sooo scrumptious - I read her school series when I was a child and had no concept of what sausages or ginger beer or most of the items actually tasted like - but she made them sound so amazing!  What an amazing gift of prolific writing she had. 

  • In spite of all the golliwog related debates, I think she remains the writer who writes the "cleanest" as far as I am concerned. It's one of the authors I know will introduce D to the world of wonder without me having to police what underlying messages might be in the book. Believe me, I'm far from paranoid but I do tend to worry on this count as I believe messages in books do have an impact at this age.

Ok, will stop before you start saying "Enough already!" in your head ;). Do share your insights on favourite authors, will be interesting for me to hear!

2 comments:

  1. Aparna I agree on all your point on EB... once I graduated that phase of reading, it was off to Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys... somehow I just could not connect to the Secret Seven. And then onto Victoria Holt - she was my first introduction in mystery... then the phase of all the pop fiction guys...Danielle Steele, Jeffrey Archer, Sidney Sheldon... and my favorite Stephen King. I love horror. Science and medical fiction has been a favorite so Michael Crichton... oh I could go on and on....

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  2. I guess Blyton has given the gift to imagination to children and adults alike. This is what makes us go back to those books all the time :)

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