The Magic Faraway Tree series
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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 of the book can visit; but they have to leave before the land "moves on", or they could be stuck in that land for a very long while 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 (a sort of fairy), the Saucepan Man, Dame Washalot, Mr Whatsisname and the Angry Pixie. The lands at the top were sometimes extremely unpleasant (the Land of Slaps) 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
- The Magic Faraway Tree
- The Folk of the Faraway Tree
The stories begin in a forest in the countryside called The Enchanted Wood where three ordinary children living on its edge have adventures inside it where there is a most enormous tree called The Faraway Tree with people living in it. These are not just ordinary humans but also pixies, elves, talking animals, brownies, wizards, and persons with lovable names like Moon-Face and Saucepan Man. Reading these books takes children on a magical journey which isn't otherwise possible in real life.
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 for a 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.