The Adventures of the Wishing Chair

Product Information

In her foreword, Enid Blyton comments on the hundreds of letters she received when the Wishing-Chair tales came to an end in the original Sunny Stories magazine which she edited and wrote. The children wanted more and they wished that all the tales could be put into one book and that's not surprising because magazines are often missed which means that serial-stories can become quite disjointed.

And admittedly it's not very scientific worldbuilding. It's not going to stand up to close scrutiny or examination and the rules are nonexistent but you try and tell me that Land of Dreams sequence wasn't a chaotic delight. While visiting a giant's castle, Peter and Mollie rescue a pixie named Chinky. He comes to live in the playroom at the bottom of the children's garden, where they keep the wishing-chair, and he is able to alert them whenever the chair grows its wings and is ready to whisk them off on yet another fantastic adventure. Throughout childhood I had the recurring image of a wonderful Titbit Dish. Every time you lift the lid there is a titbit there — a sausage, a bar of chocolate, an orange or even an ice-cream. Like all children I could never get as many sweets and goodies that I required and I used to think about that little dish which Peter owned. What a wonderful possession it would be — then at the end of this book he gives it away to a naughty brownie. What a waste of such a desirable item! Like the Faraway Tree series, the theme of the Wishing-Chair tales revolves mainly around the various places the children visit but Mollie and Peter have an advantage because they can fly off to any exotic location they like rather than having to wait for a suitable land to appear on their doorstep. Over the ensuing days and weeks they visit many places and besides coming across some extraordinary characters and situations, they also court much danger. To clue you up a little here are some of the chapters — The Grabbit Gnomes, The Adventure Of The Green Enchanter, The Witch Kirri-Kirri, The Magician's Party, Witch Snippit, The Windy Wizard, Mr Twisty, Two Bad Children, The Horrid Quarrel, The Enchanter Clip-Clap, Big-Ears The Goblin, The Snoogle and there are many more. It can be gathered that the children together with Chinky meet up with plenty of Witches and Wizards which is what all good fairy-tales require. There are also magicians and many dubious and crafty people which is obvious when Mr Twisty appears on the scene. The chapter about the horrid quarrel concerns a morning when they are all a little bored with the rainy weather and become a little crotchety with each other resulting in Chinky getting up and leaving in a huff! The children expect him to return but he doesn't so as they have a wonderful way of getting to any place on earth (or in Fairyland), they get into the Wishing Chair and whiz off to find him. It turns out that their little friend has been captured by a great big bird belonging to an enchanter so the plot takes off into the stratosphere with four chapters devoted to a thrilling account of a dangerous quest. Moving on it can be pointed out that in this book the familiar name of "Big Ears" does not refer to Noddy's friend but to a furtive goblin whom they come up against although he is very small fry indeed when compared with the Snoogle — and what can a Snoogle be? This is another of the creative names that Enid Blyton thought up every now and again and I can tell you that a Snoogle is a very frightening and rather spooky entity and poses a severe threat to the children's and Chinky's safety! Mollie and Peter have saved some money and plan to go to buy their mother a birthday present and as they say ........ Holy-moly... they discover a chair or vice versa, which can fly...There are so many possibilities for adventure and conflict in the Wishing-Chair setting that the children and Chinky do not really need a mischievous or silly outsider to accompany them on their travels although at least one makes an appearance — Thomas, but he doesn't get to go with Peter and Chinky when they whisk away in the chair to get help for his unpleasant-looking face! When Peter and Mollie wander into an antique shop to buy a present for their mother's birthday, little do they know how enthralling life is about to become. Quite by accident, they acquire a wishing-chair which sprouts wings and flies them wherever they want to go. The Wishing-Chair Again came out in 1950 after it was serialised in the Sunny Stories magazine about a year earlier. That's over ten years after the first book ( Adventures of the Wishing Chair) was published. This book will provide you a dose of healthy nostalgia and remind most fans about the joys of earlier generations and the books. Enid Blyton is a legend and a brilliant story writer. Something I noticed in the last book of The Faraway Tree series, and particularly in this book, is that the father has vanished. There is no mention of a father in this particular story, only mother. While the Faraway Tree was written during and after the war, there is a good explanation as to why the father vanishes, however this is a pre-war book. Maybe the reason that there does not appear to be a father is because we are looking from the children's view point and most of their time is spent with their mother while father is off at work. However, the children are also clearly pre-school since not once are they mentioned going to school.

According to the Index Translationum, Blyton was the fifth most popular author in the world in 2007, coming after Lenin but ahead of Shakespeare. Mollie and Peter, searching for a birthday present for their mother, find a mysterious antiques shop which appears to be run by fairy folk. There, they find a magic Wishing-Chair with the power to grow wings and fly. After the chair rescues them from the shop, and gets them home, they decide to keep the chair in their playroom. On their first adventure, they rescue a pixie called Chinky (renamed to Binky in revised editions and Jigs in the TV series) [1] from a giant. The pixie comes to live in their playroom, and the remainder of the book concerns the adventures of the children, as the chair takes them, and Chinky (later named Binky) to various magical places. Enid Blyton was the first all-text no-pictures author I ever read. Two decades worth of evolved tastes and increasing cynicism have washed away most of my delight, but I continue to retain a lot of fondness for her fantasy stories.

Wishing-Chair

This appears to have been written earlier than the Faraway Tree series and Blyton's style in this book seems to be quite different as well. Where the Faraway Tree had stories that covered multiple chapters the Wishing Chair has about one adventure per chapter with the exception of two, one takes up two chapters and the grand finale takes up three. Also, where the adult world occasionally intruded into the world of the Faraway Tree, in that the fairies would come and visit the children in their home, this does not happen in the world of the Wishing Chair. A couple of the adventures do involve the adult world intruding, but they only involved an incident when the Wishing Chair was going to be sold, where it was then moved into the house, and the other one involved a missing ring. However, pretty much most of the adventures occur in the play room, and the faerie realm, which appears to be an extension of the play room.

The Wishing-Chair is a series of two novels by the English author Enid Blyton, and a third book published in 2000 compiled from Blyton's short stories. The three children's stories are as follows: Its true that some good books can feel almost as random, Mary Poppins for example is at least as variable as this, however that randomness is offset by grounded moments that make the weird ones stand out through contrast. It's just- there is something so wonderfully imaginative about all of the places and people that are there in these books? The strange lands and the ridiculously quirky characters are a constant source of entertainment simply because they are so very weird. I mean yes, of course the conflicts are simplistic and the antagonists are not too bright but that's not what I'm here for. I'm here for the worldbuilding. This book follows on from the first Wishing Chair book and Blyton's storytelling ability has certainly begun to advance by this stage. However, I have also noticed that there is a gap of about 27 years between these two books. During this time she had written the three Faraway Tree books, so it is not surprising that as we read this story we discover references to the Faraway Tree and some of the magical lands therein. We also meet one of the Gollywogs which suggests that Blyton, in a way, is weaving all of her fairy tale books into one world.

Including a feature-length adaptation of Enid Blyton’s The Adventures of The Wishing Chair, this Tonie is perfect for long journeys and chapter-by-chapter listening. I think that Adventures of the Wishing-Chair is an exceptionally good item to produce when a child wishes to read his or her very first book however if the young person is of a very nervous disposition and prone to nightmares then it might be wise to think about chapters such as those where the children enter a witch's garden at the dead of night or when they are captured in a castle belonging to an outlandish creature. Unlike the first book, which was more a collection of short stories, the structure of this book is more like the Faraway Tree where there are a small number of adventures with the final adventure being a journey to light-hearted place (the Island of Surprises). It is also interesting that while the two children begin by looking for the land of Goodness Knows Where, they never actually arrive because they end up being distracted in their journey. Another interesting aspect is that the children are now at school so the entire adventure occurs during their long holiday (in Australia it would be the summer holidays in December and January but I am unsure how things work in England).