I've read this one before. In fact, I've read both 'The Enchanted Wood' and its first of two sequels, 'The Magic Faraway Tree', many times, both as a kid and more recently. However, I'm seeing it in a slightly different light now because of my classic genre children's novels project, especially after a dozen of the 'Oz' books of L. Frank Baum.

You see, Enid Blyton is one of the most prolific and popular writers in the history of literature, her almost eight-hundred books translated into over ninety languages. She's been dead since 1968 but some of her series, like the 'Famous Five' and the 'Secret Seven' still sell in six-figures annually. By the early sixties, 146 different companies were merchandising Noddy, her most famous character. However, she's also one of the most frequently banned authors, as the literary community saw her as a second rate writer, at best, unworthy of attention; and, at worst, damaging to children.

'The Enchanted Wood' is a relatively early Blyton, published in 1939 and it's easy to see that level of criticism being applied. It's a simple episodic story that clearly poured out of the author's head onto the page without any later revisions. It's told in simple language for young readers with the author occasionally talking directly to the audience as if this was transcribed from an oral telling. The three protagonist children—Jo, Bessie and Fanny—are almost unceasingly happy, even when awful things happen, and there's no background or depth to anything. It's often wildly convenient too and characters are practically cardboard cutouts. This isn't great literature.

However, like Baum's 'Oz' books, which could easily have been an inspiration, it's imaginative to a degree that's rarely seen. We may not see much of the real world here but the fantasy lands that we visit along with the children are so vibrant that we really don't care about how characters are so shallow and situations so convenient. It's easy to see the Enchanted Wood as an escape from an awful reality and, whatever level of awful our realities are at, we want to leap headlong into it to join the adventures. It's purest escapism but that's no bad thing, especially in 1939 with world war imminent.

For example, these three kids, who are so young that they're all surely under ten, find themselves forced to move from the town to the countryside just so Father can have a job, a fact that doesn't stop them having to grow vegetables because they can't afford to buy any. Many others would also be forced to move very soon for worse reasons. Blyton doesn't tell us what city they moved out of or which village they moved into, just that they have a small but delightful cottage. We don't meet a single soul in the real world outside their family and Mother and Father are never given names.

No wonder they spend most of their time wandering around without supervision. Sure, they have chores to do and often have to help with the house and garden but they're also free to wander off for entire days to explore the countryside. And that's when they discover the Enchanted Wood, as it’s known even to locals, behind their cottage. It's well-named, as they soon discover when tasked with stopping a robbery: a gnome steals a bag from a group of brownies, but Jo alerts them, trips the gnome and throws the bag back to its owners. Suddenly they're a part of something else. And when that gnome escapes up the Faraway Tree and the brownies warn them off following, we are set for adventures.

Technically, the Faraway Tree had appeared three years earlier in 'The Yellow Fairy Book', as had one of its inhabitants, Moon-Face, but it's fleshed out here and brought to joyous life. For a start, it's a huge tree, the largest in the Enchanted Wood, its tops reaching up into the clouds. There are a host of characterful occupants too, living in rooms carved into the tree itself. Most importantly, other lands visit on a revolving basis, pausing at the top so that visitors can climb into them, enjoy (or not) their time there and climb back out again before they move on. It's a glorious creation, a potentially endless source of adventures.

Of course, the children climb up, even though that surely can't be a trivial task for kids this young, and they meet the inhabitants. On their first climb, Bessie is soaked by the Angry Pixie and again by the water Dame Washalot sloshes down the tree. Mr. Watzisname is asleep in his deck chair, as always. However, they meet Silky the elf, who serves them pop biscuits—biscuits that you put into your mouth so they can explode with flavour—then Moon-Face, who allows them to take the quick way down on his Slippery Slip, a slide that revolves around the backbone of the tree.

If the tree's inhabitants are a mix of good and bad—OK, more disagreeable than bad—the worlds that visit are just as mixed and, for a while, seem universally bad. The first the children encounter is the Roundabout Land, which spends most of its time revolving and only periodically stopping for a break. They lose track of the hole so only get back out with the help of some friendly rabbits and some rope. Jo is grabbed into the Land of Ice Snow by the Magic Snowman who wants to make him his servant, building him a snow house and whatever else he needs. Rocking Land, which does just what think from that name, almost induces motion sickness from the page.

However, there are pleasant lands, most of which are incredibly convenient. For instance, right as Father breaks his spade and he and Mother talk about what they could really do with to move the cottage forward, the Land of Take-What-You-Want shows up, so they can simply collect everything they need for free: a goat, some hens, a brand new spade. Sure, they stay too long and have to get home with a free aeroplane, via an unpleasant stay at Dame Slap's School of corporal punishment and unanswerable questions, escaping only through the antics of a heroic clock, but still. The final chapters are spent in the Land of Birthdays, which is as wish-fulfilment as it gets.

My favourite chapter is the one triggered by the children being allowed to bring three friends to a party at the cottage but Silky, Moon-Face and the Saucepan-Man don't show so they look into why and find that the entire Faraway Tree has been taken by a hundred Red Goblins. It's therefore up to the children, with the tree's residents and Mr. Whiskers's fifty-one identical brownies, to re-take it in a pitched battle. Mighty-One the Wizard arriving with the next land in need of a hundred new servants is outrageously convenient but the fight is glorious fun.

Even now, I want to explore the Enchanted Wood, especially at night on a market day, when I can ride the clockwork train and use the rope to climb the Faraway Tree. I want to wrap my arms round a whispering tree and put my left ear to its trunk to hear what it's telling me. I want to check out a slew of lands at the top and ride down afterwards on the Slippery Slip. I'll hand my cushions to the squirrel like a good boy. I want to escape, too. Back in 1939, World War II was about to start but we may not be far off the next one right now.

It doesn't matter that these characters have maybe one aspect to define them or that the lands are often ridiculous. It's the very design of the place, the fact that the land at the top of the tree could be anything, disregarding logic entirely and following only its own rules. That puts this book firmly in the 'Oz' tradition, as a pure flight of fancy without any sort of social commentary driving it. Blyton is simpler and more repetitive than Baum, while being just as convenient, but she's also smoother, more accessible and, if memory serves, more consistent. And I think I'd like to visit the Enchanted Wood and the Faraway Tree before Oz. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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