The Magic Faraway Tree series

From Wacklepedia - The Free Encyclopedia

Series of children's books written by Enid Blyton. The stories revolve around a wood where a gigantic magic tree grows, discovered by three children living nearby. Every day, at the top of the tree, a new magic land appears, which the children of the book can visit: they have to leave before the land "moves on", or they will be stuck in the land forever when it is replaced by the next one.

The main inhabitants of the Faraway Tree are Moonface, Silky (a sort of fairy), the Saucepan Man, Dame Washalot, Mr Whatsisname and the Angry Pixie. The lands at the top tended to be either extremely unpleasant (the Land of Slaps) or 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.

The titles are:

1. The Enchanted Wood

2. The Magic Faraway Tree

3. The Folk of the Faraway Tree

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 and in the third because Fanny is a slang term in the United Kingdom for a woman's vagina.

In addition, 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.