I love Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree – but I’m happy there will be a more gender-equal version

I’m always looking at new books for big authors to interview. So, I was intrigued when I came across Jacqueline Wilson’s brand new version of Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree, which is out in May.

The original is one of my all-time favourite classics – I love to read it to my children at bedtime. They adore all the different magical lands that can be reached at the top of the gigantic Faraway Tree with its huge slide – the Slippery-Slip that Joe, Beth and Frannie discover when they move next door to an enchanted wood and meet Moon-Face, Saucepan Man and Silky the fairy.

But Wilson – who is making her version gender-neutral – is getting backlash from the Enid Blyton Society, who claim that children need to read the original text to understand changes in society.

They say that new books by other authors may be “more in keeping with today’s world” but “they too will become out of date as time passes”.

The Free Speech Union also offered an opinion, saying: “What’s next? Is Jacqueline Wilson going to rewrite Lord of the Flies and change Piggy’s name to Percy to avoid fat-shaming?”

But in my opinion, this new edition to the canon should be welcomed. It introduces three new children, Milo, Mia, and Birdy, whose parents keep a close watch over them – rather than in the original, where no adult supervision is the norm.

In Wilson’s book, when Moon-Face asks Silky to help do domestic chores around the home, Mia tells him that he has sexist expectations of Silky and spells out why he shouldn’t say that. Mia also makes it clear that girls are as clever as boys – and sometimes more so.

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Wilson, who has written modern interpretations of classics such as The Railway Children before, has said she is following on from the 1943 original and staying “very very faithful to the whole situation that Enid Blyton set up”. She also hopes readers of the new book will go back to the others.

I’m sure that Wilson, a fan of Blyton’s books, will preserve the childhood magic while also stamping out sexism and giving new readers a deeper connection to characters that reflect the 21st century.

One thing, though, is for certain. The fact that Wilson’s children discover the Land of Unicorns is a no-brainer. My children will be in heaven. I’m dying to get my hands on it.

Yours,

Charlotte Cripps

Culture writer