However, this is the first Magic Faraway Tree book in 75 years and the first by an author other than Enid Blyton. Hachette, the publisher with the rights to the Blyton estate, commissioned an updating of Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven series in 2019. She previously wrote modern versions of Five Children and It and The Railway Children, the Edith Nesbit stories, and Susan Coolidge’s What Katy Did. Mrs Wilson has form when it comes to updating literary classics. In the 1990s, the original children’s names of Dick and Fanny were changed to Rick and Frannie. Mrs Wilson has retained the idea of magical lands at the top of the tree, but included some of her own: the Land of Dragons and the Land of Unicorns. The new book, to be published on May 26, is titled The Magic Faraway Tree: A New Adventure. The parents are drinking their morning coffee when the children go out to play, and still drinking it when the children get back.” For the children, time moves on, but back at home it stands still. “Jacqueline has very brilliantly got around that through the magic of time. “The parents are much more 21st century than in the original, and they do have anxiety about what their children get up to.

Mrs Wilson has acknowledged this in her book. Today’s children - or, more accurately, their parents - might find the idea alarming. When Blyton wrote The Enchanted Wood (1939), The Magic Faraway Tree (1943) and The Folk of the Faraway Tree (1946), she allowed her young characters to roam free.Īs in the Famous Five and Secret Seven series, the children spent whole days, and even some nights, alone on their adventures. Mia tells him that he has sexist expectations of Silky, and explains why he should not say that.” “In the story, there is a reference to Moonface asking Silky the fairy to help around the home. “Mia, the older girl, says that in the modern world girls are just as clever as boys, and sometimes cleverer. It will keep the original, magical inhabitants of the Faraway Tree, including Moon-Face, Silky the Fairy and the Saucepan Man.īut when Moon-Face expresses a Blyton-esque sentiment about girls being required to help with domestic tasks, while boys do something more exciting, he is immediately educated on the subject of gender equality.Īlexander Antscherl, editorial director at Enid Blyton Entertainment, said: “The book has got some nods to gender equality between girls and boys, which you didn’t always see in the original books.

Jacqueline Wilson is writing a new version of the story, updated for the 21st century, in which three siblings named Milo, Mia and Birdy discover the enchanted wood. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton’s beloved children’s adventure, is to get a modern makeover with a lesson about sexism.

Enid blyton the enchanted wood