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A review by sherwoodreads
Enid Blyton: The Biography by Barbara Stoney
When I was nine years old, my babysitter brought me a Blyton in a stealthy play to keep me from leading my sibs into bratty behavior. Always book-starved, I glommed onto that book and fell straight into the story. It was The Castle of Adventure. I discovered five more by her on the library shelves, and checked them out and reread them repeatedly.
It wasn't until I was considerably older and traveled to England that I discovered just how much she'd written, but by then, alas, most of the magic had gone out, except for remembered passion for those Adventure stories. A week or two ago, I was talking to an English lady in her eighties who was a dedicated Blyton reader as a child; during the war, she spent her scant pocket money on Blyton's magazines, sharing them with friends. These were often the only bright spot in an anxious and dreary time. She remembers the books with fondness, but cannot read them now, she said with gentle regret.
There are some works that I think are perfect for the reader of a certain age, whether physical or emotional. (And I realize that 'emotional age' is difficult to pin down: though I am now an old bat by usual reckoning, I'm still not old enough for horror or perfect little gems of despair.) Blyton's work is best discovered when you're twelve and under.
I sought a biography in an effort to understand why--what was Blyton's intent? Was this her goal? Was she aware of this peculiar sort of genius? And it was genius, though mostly what I found written about her was excoriating criticism for her cliche plots, cliche language, sexism, racism, etc etc.
Stoney spent years tracking down the details of Blyton's life, including sifting clues to bits of her history that she had totally reinvented. The result is an interesting biography (perhaps a little too aware that many concerned in Blyton's life are still alive, with a resultant tone of apologetics) that shares what details are available, without speculating too deeply about what made Blyton's stories work so phenomenally well. For kids.
What I'd hoped to read in this book was summed up in the last paragraph: that Blyton remained emotionally a kid, and thus wrote for kids from as close to a kid's-eye view as an adult can come.
It wasn't until I was considerably older and traveled to England that I discovered just how much she'd written, but by then, alas, most of the magic had gone out, except for remembered passion for those Adventure stories. A week or two ago, I was talking to an English lady in her eighties who was a dedicated Blyton reader as a child; during the war, she spent her scant pocket money on Blyton's magazines, sharing them with friends. These were often the only bright spot in an anxious and dreary time. She remembers the books with fondness, but cannot read them now, she said with gentle regret.
There are some works that I think are perfect for the reader of a certain age, whether physical or emotional. (And I realize that 'emotional age' is difficult to pin down: though I am now an old bat by usual reckoning, I'm still not old enough for horror or perfect little gems of despair.) Blyton's work is best discovered when you're twelve and under.
I sought a biography in an effort to understand why--what was Blyton's intent? Was this her goal? Was she aware of this peculiar sort of genius? And it was genius, though mostly what I found written about her was excoriating criticism for her cliche plots, cliche language, sexism, racism, etc etc.
Stoney spent years tracking down the details of Blyton's life, including sifting clues to bits of her history that she had totally reinvented. The result is an interesting biography (perhaps a little too aware that many concerned in Blyton's life are still alive, with a resultant tone of apologetics) that shares what details are available, without speculating too deeply about what made Blyton's stories work so phenomenally well. For kids.
What I'd hoped to read in this book was summed up in the last paragraph: that Blyton remained emotionally a kid, and thus wrote for kids from as close to a kid's-eye view as an adult can come.