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Enid Blyton’s Stories For You
184 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 1966
63 people want to read
About the author
Enid Blyton
5,132 books6,299 followersSee also:
Ένιντ Μπλάιτον (Greek)
Enida Blaitona (Latvian)
Энид Блайтон (Russian)
Inid Blajton (Serbian)
Інід Блайтон (Ukrainian)
Enid Mary Blyton (1897–1968) was an English author of children's books.
Born in South London, Blyton was the eldest of three children, and showed an early interest in music and reading. She was educated at St. Christopher's School, Beckenham, and - having decided not to pursue her music - at Ipswich High School, where she trained as a kindergarten teacher. She taught for five years before her 1924 marriage to editor Hugh Pollock, with whom she had two daughters. This marriage ended in divorce, and Blyton remarried in 1943, to surgeon Kenneth Fraser Darrell Waters. She died in 1968, one year after her second husband.
Blyton was a prolific author of children's books, who penned an estimated 800 books over about 40 years. Her stories were often either children's adventure and mystery stories, or fantasies involving magic. Notable series include: The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, The Five Find-Outers, Noddy, The Wishing Chair, Mallory Towers, and St. Clare's.
According to the Index Translationum, Blyton was the fifth most popular author in the world in 2007, coming after Lenin but ahead of Shakespeare.
See also her pen name Mary Pollock
Ένιντ Μπλάιτον (Greek)
Enida Blaitona (Latvian)
Энид Блайтон (Russian)
Inid Blajton (Serbian)
Інід Блайтон (Ukrainian)
Enid Mary Blyton (1897–1968) was an English author of children's books.
Born in South London, Blyton was the eldest of three children, and showed an early interest in music and reading. She was educated at St. Christopher's School, Beckenham, and - having decided not to pursue her music - at Ipswich High School, where she trained as a kindergarten teacher. She taught for five years before her 1924 marriage to editor Hugh Pollock, with whom she had two daughters. This marriage ended in divorce, and Blyton remarried in 1943, to surgeon Kenneth Fraser Darrell Waters. She died in 1968, one year after her second husband.
Blyton was a prolific author of children's books, who penned an estimated 800 books over about 40 years. Her stories were often either children's adventure and mystery stories, or fantasies involving magic. Notable series include: The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, The Five Find-Outers, Noddy, The Wishing Chair, Mallory Towers, and St. Clare's.
According to the Index Translationum, Blyton was the fifth most popular author in the world in 2007, coming after Lenin but ahead of Shakespeare.
See also her pen name Mary Pollock
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 2, 2017
Stories for You is typical fare by Enid Blyton, for youngsters of around 7-9 years old. It contains 17 stories, each just a few pages long, with a line drawing on almost every page. There are also 4 very short verse poems included (mostly 8 to 12 lines with a simple rhyming structure). The stories date from the mid 1960s, and it shows, even though they have been reissued several times and much of Enid Blyton’s work is still in print and still popular.
Some of the titles are: “The Very Fierce Carpenter”, “The Bit of Barley-Sugar”,“Mr Squiggle”, “He wanted Adventures!”, “The Big Dog”, “The Wrong Berries”, “Funny Little Mankie”, “The Great Big Bone”,“The Horse, the Wasp and the Donkey”, “The Old Red Stocking”, “You’re a Bully”, “The Quarrel in the Playroom”. The poems, such as “The Friendly Toad” are all about nature.
The stories are quite often about a little boy or girl who doesn’t fit in, and how they manage to defeat those bullying them. Another popular theme is a child who is slower, or somehow different from the others, and how they become included. “The Vowel Dolls” for instance, describes a little girl who names all her dolls so that the first initial of their name is a vowel, to help her remember them. “The Quiet Little Boy” describes a little boy who likes to be on his own, and does not join in the boisterous games his classmates enjoy. He prefers to go fishing. When an accident happens, it is he who manages to save the day, and become a hero. There are several in this vein, sometimes taking place in boarding schools.
I quite liked the fantasy element such as “Mr Squiggle”, about a sort of pixie: a funny little man “like a brownie” clothed in 18th century dress, and with pencils in his pocket. Whenever the little girl scribbles all over the wall, or where she shouldn’t he would appear, and tell her exactly what rude words she had written about people in squiggle language!
Dogs and cats come into the stories quite a lot, personified, and I liked these too. Little dogs always end up getting the better of big dogs, and little creatures are inevitably more clever, for the purpose of the story. There is a great deal of trickery, and Brer Rabbit-type stories. In fact Enid Blyton did adapt a lot of the Brer Rabbit stories for children, and this is how many English children would first encounter them. Enid Blyton wrote quite a lot of stories about toys, again where the toys are humanised and the viewpoint characters. One is about a Teddy, a curly-haired doll, and a golliwog. These three toys were all very proud because they were expensive. Each of them did horrid things to the others, so that they would get the prize for being the best toy and they even whipped a poor old tatty toy donkey. Of course they got their comeuppance, and the simple old kind toys who were not at all stuck-up, and horrified at their behaviour, got the prizes. There is even a story about the “Mr Galliano’s Circus” characters in this collection, and this series is still popular today.
All the stories are feel-good stories, and most of them have a moral message. On the plus side, they are from a simpler time, with little to object to, and stories which keen readers will devour as they are fast-moving page-turners. On the minus side, they are very dated, for instance in style, with lots of cosy addressing of the reader ,“dear children”, or twee endings of each story, “I’m not surprised, are you?” They are also anachronistic in many ways. All the children are white and lower middle class. All the fathers work, and all the mothers stay at home. There is only one single parent family, and we are told the son is badly behaved because he does not have a father. The toys are old-fashioned, for example one boy's prize possession is a wooden train to pull along the ground. The boys tend to go off and have more adventures outdoors, particularly around rivers, and the girls are more domestic.
On the other hand, these are children who are more independent, and not taken everywhere by their parents. It reflects an earlier way of life: a time when the world was presented as wholesome, without social problems. A time full of words like “merry, kind, excited, silly, awful, cheerful, good-tempered, angry, indignant, squabble, joking, delighted”…
Welcome to Enid Blyton’s world. You might love it, or you might hate it.
Some of the titles are: “The Very Fierce Carpenter”, “The Bit of Barley-Sugar”,“Mr Squiggle”, “He wanted Adventures!”, “The Big Dog”, “The Wrong Berries”, “Funny Little Mankie”, “The Great Big Bone”,“The Horse, the Wasp and the Donkey”, “The Old Red Stocking”, “You’re a Bully”, “The Quarrel in the Playroom”. The poems, such as “The Friendly Toad” are all about nature.
The stories are quite often about a little boy or girl who doesn’t fit in, and how they manage to defeat those bullying them. Another popular theme is a child who is slower, or somehow different from the others, and how they become included. “The Vowel Dolls” for instance, describes a little girl who names all her dolls so that the first initial of their name is a vowel, to help her remember them. “The Quiet Little Boy” describes a little boy who likes to be on his own, and does not join in the boisterous games his classmates enjoy. He prefers to go fishing. When an accident happens, it is he who manages to save the day, and become a hero. There are several in this vein, sometimes taking place in boarding schools.
I quite liked the fantasy element such as “Mr Squiggle”, about a sort of pixie: a funny little man “like a brownie” clothed in 18th century dress, and with pencils in his pocket. Whenever the little girl scribbles all over the wall, or where she shouldn’t he would appear, and tell her exactly what rude words she had written about people in squiggle language!
Dogs and cats come into the stories quite a lot, personified, and I liked these too. Little dogs always end up getting the better of big dogs, and little creatures are inevitably more clever, for the purpose of the story. There is a great deal of trickery, and Brer Rabbit-type stories. In fact Enid Blyton did adapt a lot of the Brer Rabbit stories for children, and this is how many English children would first encounter them. Enid Blyton wrote quite a lot of stories about toys, again where the toys are humanised and the viewpoint characters. One is about a Teddy, a curly-haired doll, and a golliwog. These three toys were all very proud because they were expensive. Each of them did horrid things to the others, so that they would get the prize for being the best toy and they even whipped a poor old tatty toy donkey. Of course they got their comeuppance, and the simple old kind toys who were not at all stuck-up, and horrified at their behaviour, got the prizes. There is even a story about the “Mr Galliano’s Circus” characters in this collection, and this series is still popular today.
All the stories are feel-good stories, and most of them have a moral message. On the plus side, they are from a simpler time, with little to object to, and stories which keen readers will devour as they are fast-moving page-turners. On the minus side, they are very dated, for instance in style, with lots of cosy addressing of the reader ,“dear children”, or twee endings of each story, “I’m not surprised, are you?” They are also anachronistic in many ways. All the children are white and lower middle class. All the fathers work, and all the mothers stay at home. There is only one single parent family, and we are told the son is badly behaved because he does not have a father. The toys are old-fashioned, for example one boy's prize possession is a wooden train to pull along the ground. The boys tend to go off and have more adventures outdoors, particularly around rivers, and the girls are more domestic.
On the other hand, these are children who are more independent, and not taken everywhere by their parents. It reflects an earlier way of life: a time when the world was presented as wholesome, without social problems. A time full of words like “merry, kind, excited, silly, awful, cheerful, good-tempered, angry, indignant, squabble, joking, delighted”…
Welcome to Enid Blyton’s world. You might love it, or you might hate it.
August 21, 2022
This is the 14th Enid Blyton Rewards book I have read (almost) in a row, as an adult, but I think it might be the first I actually want to rate higher than 3 stars.
Maybe it's just my state of mind today, recovering from having the flu, a little bit emotional from my previous read, that I just really enjoyed this right now.
I actually enjoyed a number of the stories, rather than just consuming them and moving on. They felt more original than a lot of the other Blyton short stories I've read (and trust me, I read two of these books yesterday). I dunno, this one just kind of hit it for me today.
It is standard Blyton - morality tales, pixies, toys coming alive, some unfortunate comments about a golliwog in one story - but overall I did enjoy the reading experience of the majority of these stories.
Maybe it's just my state of mind today, recovering from having the flu, a little bit emotional from my previous read, that I just really enjoyed this right now.
I actually enjoyed a number of the stories, rather than just consuming them and moving on. They felt more original than a lot of the other Blyton short stories I've read (and trust me, I read two of these books yesterday). I dunno, this one just kind of hit it for me today.
It is standard Blyton - morality tales, pixies, toys coming alive, some unfortunate comments about a golliwog in one story - but overall I did enjoy the reading experience of the majority of these stories.
January 9, 2018
Stories For You, a collection of stories, fables and poems that my mum read to me as a child, is the first Enid Blyton I’ve read to my son. It seems anachronistic and more dated than you’d expect for 1966, with its rural settings, castles, princes and princesses, milk delivered by horse and cart, traditional gender roles and golliwogs, but Blyton was already nearly 70, and had published her first book 44 years earlier. Two years later she was dead. Dated as they are, however, these stories have a moral integrity that remains as valid today as ever. Kindness repays kindness, hatred is best fought with love, bullies are really cowards; and more mundanely, you shouldn’t graffiti. If you do graffiti, by the way, Mr Squiggle will come after you, and you don’t want that, do you?
December 23, 2019
A not super-exciting collection of Blyton short stories, the best of which is that of a young boy who wants adventure, and, at the end of the tale, we find he'd had a dozen opportunities that day which, for laziness, he'd skipped. Skews a bit toward the younger end of her audience, I think?
Might want to re-borrow it for DD#1 (age 6), a big Blyton fan, who has been diligently ploughing her way through Secret Seven books.
Might want to re-borrow it for DD#1 (age 6), a big Blyton fan, who has been diligently ploughing her way through Secret Seven books.
January 19, 2013
This book resurfaced from my childhood. A gift from my best friend for my 8th birthday in 1987. It was lovely to revisit Blyton's wholesome and moral stories. I would love to read some of these stories to my nieces and nephews, if only they'd sit still long enough for a story these days.... Such a lovely collection of short stories!
June 8, 2024
Some very outdated stereotypes but also some cheery little moral tales. Mixed.
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April 16, 2018I loved the story about the vowel dolls, and told my daughter now 8 about them, so she would remember her vowels. I grew up on everything Enid Blyton and am thankful that I did as her stories gave me a lifelong love of reading and books. I have subsequently gone on to write my own children's book.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews