“‘I don’t believe in things like that - fairies or brownies or magic or anything. It’s old-fashioned.’
’Well, we must be jolly old-fashioned then,’ said Bessie. ‘Because we not only believe in the Faraway Tree and love our funny friends there, but we go to see them too - and we visit the lands at the top of the Tree as well!’”
A fairy village on our way to the lake.
Since spring break, our kids have listened to this audiobook, one of a trilogy in Enid Blyton's The Magic Faraway Tree Series, at least three times all the way through, and given that this is a five-hour audiobook, that's quite a bit of listening to the same book in such a short time (although Kate Winslet's voice makes it go ever so quickly). We just returned from yet another long road trip, this time to Montreal, and their desire for this series, along with many Roald Dahl favorites, especially Matilda (a radio play version, similar to the types Nalin remembers listening to as a child) and The Witches (our version read by Simon Callow — amazing), didn't diminish. What you must understand about my boys, only 21 months apart, is that they are extremely different. The older, more analytical, favors Minecraft, Star Wars, all things Lego, etc.; the other is more whimsical, preferring potions, trinkets, goos and ooze, magic wands that sparkle. And yet they both are mesmerized by the tales of fairies and their adventures. The only pushback on these stories is when a child is treated badly by an adult (often in the Dahl books), and at this, my older son Ettu asks us to kindly skip ahead in the story. Anu, our youngest, cries for a bit that she can't listen to her favorite Annie soundtrack, and yet she, as well settles in to listen or rest (who knows?).
I've tried to determine what in these fairy stories elicits such rapture and contentment (and I'm not kidding, these kids can listen to these stories for hours without getting antsy, which is great, since we don't have a DVD player in the car). There are all of the different lands in The Folk of the Faraway Tree: the Land of Marvels, the Land of Tea Parties, the Land of Giants (an ode to Jack and the Beanstalk), the Land of Enchantments, etc. I imagine that my son Ettu has a soft spot for the Land of Know-Alls: people visit this land to find out anything they wish to know, and the know-alls can answer everyone's questions. What a paradise for a curious nearly-eight-year-old! From what I've gathered over the snippets of listening over the last few sessions, much of this last book in the trilogy is spent by the children trying to convince a skeptical and rude friend of the reality of the magic that exists in these lands they've visited before. Perhaps this attempt at getting someone else to "believe" is what grabs hold, not to mention that the characters they encounter are hysterical and imaginative (Saucepan Man and Moonface, among others), and the adventures they have are a curious mix of mishaps and marvels. I'm not sure why Enid Blyton, an extraordinarily prolific children's book writer, has not caught on over in the US, but I'm determined to spread the word.
Lately, when I've put the boys to bed, they've asked me to tell them a fairy story. And so in the midst of my own fatigue and empty-headedness at the end of a long day, I do my best. One story is about the fairy who wanted her own special shoes (she sees them on humans and wants her own), so she goes to the cobbler in the woods who sets about making the tiniest shoes he's ever made, whisper quiet enough to not detract from her lightness. Or then there's the one about the troll at the end of an enchanted lake who has forever rebuffed the attempts of friendship from the only other "living" creature nearby, a young fairy across the lake who only wants connection. Or there's the one about the fairies who make it possible for children to find their way through the woods to water on the other side in the heat of summer, by lighting a path so they don't get lost or have to walk all the way around the woods under the scorching sun. (I guess I need to write these down!) The boys inevitably drift off to sleep, with fairies on their minds. These fairies are girls, and they are boys. They are flawed, and they are lovely. And they always love. Who couldn't love them? Who couldn't believe in them, or at least hope for them? And the trolls and ogres? Well, in the end, they almost all have hearts of gold themselves.
Next, after we finish the first Harry Potter book, we're starting The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage, the first of The Five Find-Outers series by Enid Blyton, introduced to us through Preeti, our resident Blyton expert. Like every great children's book/series, the kids rule the roost and command the adventure. Their independence envied by any and every child, for sure. Like any family, we're facing our fair share of (for lack of a better world) intrusions by outside forces we can't always control: video game craze, media influences, commercialism in toys and movies, the inevitable peer pressure finding its hold on even the littlest of hearts and minds. So as long as we can keep these worlds alive in our children's lives, we will do so. After all, who doesn't like a little magic?