The Magic Faraway Tree series
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Image:The Magic Faraway Tree.jpg The Magic Faraway Tree series is a popular series of children's books written by Enid Blyton. The stories revolve around a wood where a gigantic magic tree grows, which is discovered by three children living nearby. Every now-and-then, at the top of the tree, a new magic land appears, which the children can visit; but they have to leave before the land "moves on", or they could be stuck in that land when it is replaced by a new land at the top of the tree.
The Faraway Tree is inhabited by people who include Moonface, Silky (an elf), the Saucepan Man, Dame Washalot, Mr Whatsisname and the Angry Pixie. The lands at the top were sometimes extremely unpleasant (the Land of Dame Slap) or sometimes fantastically enjoyable (the Land of Birthdays, the Land of Take-What-You-Want).
The stories are inventive and fantastic and have continued to delight children. Like many of Blyton's books, they also provide an insight into a particular vision of mid-twentieth-century domestic life, which some modern readers find charming and others somewhat offensive as they choose to view it through a modern prism.
The titles in the series are:
- The Enchanted Wood (1939)
- The Magic Faraway Tree (1943)
- The Folk of the Faraway Tree (1946)
- Up the Faraway Tree (1951)
The stories begin when the three children, Jo, Bessie and Fanny, move from the town where they hated living to the countryside. They quickly find the Enchanted Wood where the faraway tree grows, inhabited by the strange characters: Moon-Face, Silky the Fairy, Dame Washalot, a talking red squirrel and others.
Updates
In modern reprints, the names of the children have been changed - from Jo, Bessie and Fanny to Joe, Beth and Frannie - in the first case to make it clear that Jo is a boy, in the second because Bessie is seldom used as a nickname for Elizabeth anymore (most would go by Beth, Liz or Lizzie), and in the third because Fanny is a slang term in the United Kingdom (see Wiktionary entry). Cousin Dick, who appears in "The Magic Faraway Tree", has his name changed to "Rick" in new editions, presumably for similar reasons.
In addition, in modern reprints, the character of Dame Slap has been re-named to Dame Snap and she no longer practises corporal punishment but instead reprimands her students by yelling very loudly.
In Alan Moore and Dave Lloyd's graphic novel "V for Vendetta," V reads "The Magic Faraway Tree" to his protege Evey before bed, and alludes to "The Land of Do-As-You-Please" and "The Land of Take-What-You-Want" over the course of the book.
Mr. Whatshisname's name is usually spelt as Mr. Watzisname. He simply has just forgotten what his real name was (for a very good reason). In 'The Folk of the Faraway Tree', the gang makes a trip to the 'Land of Secrets' at one point where Mr. Watzisname learns of his real name. It is 'Kollamoolitumarellipawkyrollo'. Funnily enough, he, and the rest of his friends forget his name by the end of that chapter.