Enid Blyton book to get modern makeover with lesson about sexism

The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton’s beloved children’s adventure, is to get a modern makeover with a lesson about sexism.

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.

It will keep the original, magical inhabitants of the Faraway Tree, including Moon-Face, Silky the Fairy and the Saucepan Man.

But 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.

Alexander 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.

“Mia, the older girl, says that in the modern world girls are just as clever as boys, and sometimes cleverer.

“In the story, there is a reference to Moonface asking Silky the fairy to help around the home. Mia tells him that he has sexist expectations of Silky, and explains why he should not say that.”

That is not the only change. 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.

 As in the Famous Five and Secret Seven series, the children spent whole days, and even some nights, alone on their adventures.

Today’s children - or, more accurately, their parents - might find the idea alarming. Mrs Wilson has acknowledged this in her book.

“The parents are much more 21st century than in the original, and they do have anxiety about what their children get up to.

“Jacqueline has very brilliantly got around that through the magic of time. For the children, time moves on, but back at home it stands still. The parents are drinking their morning coffee when the children go out to play, and still drinking it when the children get back.”

The new book, to be published on May 26, is titled The Magic Faraway Tree: A New Adventure.

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.

This is not the first update. In the 1990s, the original children’s names of Dick and Fanny were changed to Rick and Frannie.

Mrs Wilson has form when it comes to updating literary classics. 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.

Hachette, the publisher with the rights to the Blyton estate, commissioned an updating of Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven series in 2019. However, this is the first Magic Faraway Tree book in 75 years and the first by an author other than Enid Blyton.

Mrs Wilson said she had loved the Faraway Tree books as a child. “It’s a privilege to be able to write about Enid Blyton’s iconic characters and invent new children and magical creatures of my own for new readers to enjoy,” she said.