!!!Spoiler Warning!!! If you haven’t read this book yet, I give away some key spoilers!
Enid Blyton’s Nature Lover’s Book
by Enid Blyton
Now, this my childhood in a nutshell. Enid Blyton was the author that ignited my love for reading. I loved all her books when I was a child. I would sit in the house for hours, forgoing friendships and childhood play, digesting the stories that sang with fairies, pixies, magic and lucky children who got to enjoy it all.
This book was a little different than the usual ones I read. This book didn’t have any magic or fairies in it. Instead, Blyton introduced me to how wonderful and surprising the countryside could be. I learned new trees and flowers without ever having to lift my eyes from the page. I learnt that bugs could be interesting and beautiful, instead of scary and gross. I learned that nature is the real magic in our world, and this book taught me to love it!
To think of the things we never noticed! We hardly ever saw anything last year—what dull children we were!
Then, when I was a little older, I put the book away in a safe place and, as often happens with childhood books, it must have got thrown out. I never saw it again, and couldn’t for the life of me remember what it had been called. I thought this treasure was lost to me forever.
But then, randomly I found it again! It was on a used book site and I ordered it immediately, knowing how much I would love it all over again!
The story follows three children who go on bi-monthly walks with their neighbour who they affectionately call Uncle Merry. Each month the kids are shown new flowers, trees, insects, bird and other animals, and encouraged to ‘use their eyes’ and spot all the wonderful changes that occur in nature every month.
The writing is very dated, with the children have a gay old time and Uncle Merry threatening mild child abuse when the young girl squeals over some animal near her and he exclaims, “Janet, I will slap you!”
Still, it was a different time back then. This is incredibly apparent in the way that nature has changed so much over such a short period on time. The book was originally written in 1944, and already some of the plants and animals described in the English countryside are virtually non-existent. It’s a pretty melancholy book when you read it against what can be seen nowadays.
There are two things I can teach you if you like to come out for walks with me—one is to use your eyes and ears in the countryside, and the other is to learn a few things about what you see and hear, so that you may really know and love the things of the woods and hills, the ponds and fields.
After the main story are some fun little activities that would cause children these days to roll their eyes and proclaim you ‘so uncool’ for even mentioning them. A few pages of flowers, birds and trees to look out for. Some poems, and then a couple of super short stories to finish off the book. All in all, it’s a treasure of yesteryear and I loved it.
Villain Rating
Obviously, there’s not going to be a villain for a book like this! How could you even imagine that a beautiful Enid Blyton book about nature could harbour a nefarious villain working in the background?
The closest we get to a villain in this book is the humble housefly. Uncle Merry advises the children to kill any they see because they spread disease and illness. Pretty harsh, Uncle Merry. Pretty harsh. 0/10
Happy Reading,
Claire
Love the Villain 