The Faraway Tree

The Faraway Tree is a series of popular novels for children by British author Enid Blyton. The titles in the series are The Enchanted Wood (1939), The Magic Faraway Tree (1943), The Folk of the Faraway Tree (1946) and Up the Faraway Tree (1951).

The stories take place in an enchanted forest in which a gigantic magical tree - the eponymous "Faraway Tree" - grows. The tree is so tall that its topmost branches reach into the clouds and it is wide enough to contain small houses carved into its trunk. The forest and the tree are discovered by three children named Jo, Bessie, and Fanny, who move into a house nearby.

The Enchanted Wood

In the first novel in the series, Jo, Bessie, and Fanny move to live near a large wood. One day, they go for a walk in the wood and discover an enormous tree whose branches seem to reach into the clouds. This is the Faraway Tree.

When the children climb the Faraway Tree they discover it is inhabited by different magical creatures, including Moon-Face, Silky the fairy, The Saucepan Man, Dame Washalot, Mr. Watzisname and the Angry Pixie. They befriend some of these creatures, in particular Moon-face and Silky. At the very top of the tree they discover a ladder which leads them to a magical land. This land is different on each visit, because each place moves on from the top of the tree to make way for a new land. The children are free to come and go, but they must leave before the land moves on or they will be stuck there until the land returns to the Faraway Tree.

The lands at the top are sometimes extremely unpleasant - for example the Land of Dame Slap, an aggressive school teacher - and sometimes fantastically enjoyable notably, the Land of Birthdays, Land of Goodies and the Land of Take-What-You-Want.

The first land the three children visit is The Roundabout Land, where they give some cake to two rabbits, and the rabbits dig a hole for themselves and the three children.The last land they visit in this book is The Land Of Birthdays, where the brownies and the inhabitants of the Faraway Tree celebrate Bessie's Birthday.

The Magic Faraway Tree

Jo, Bessie and Fanny's cousin Dick comes to stay and he joins the adventures in the magic faraway tree. Dick is not interested at first but later on in the story he gets interested, and into trouble.

The Folk of the Faraway Tree

Connie, a stuck-up girl also comes to stay with the children, while her mother, Lizzie, is ill. At first Connie refuses to believe in the Faraway Tree or the magical folk who live in it, even when the Angry Pixie throws ink at her. Jo, Bessie, and Fannie take her to the lands at the top of the tree and Connie gets a few surprises! The Saucepan Man's mother decides to live in the tree, after leaving her job as a cook in Dame Slap's land. She sets up a cake shop in the tree.

Up the Faraway Tree

The first title of the main trilogy, The Enchanted Wood, was published in 1939, although the Faraway Tree and Moon-Face had already made a brief appearance in 1936 in The Yellow Fairy Book. A picture-strip book, Up the Faraway Tree, was published in 1951.

Over the years, the Faraway Tree stories have been illustrated by various artists including Dorothy Wheeler, Rene Cloke, Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone and Georgina Hargreaves.

Updates

• In modern reprints, the names of the children have been changed:
  • Jo is changed to Joe, because the character is a boy and this is the more commonly used spelling of the name for males;
  • Bessie is changed to Beth, because the former name is now less commonly used as a nickname for Elizabeth;
  • Fanny is changed to Frannie, because the former name is slang for vulva in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand (see Wiktionary entry) and "bottom" in the USA.
  • Cousin Dick, who appears in "The Magic Faraway Tree", has been changed to "Rick" as "Dick" is American, Australian and British slang for penis.
• In modern reprints, the character of Dame Slap has been re-named to Dame Snap and she no longer practises corporal punishment but instead reprimands her students by yelling at them very loudly.

Characters

The main characters are Joe, Beth, and Franny, three siblings. Franny is the youngest, Beth is next in age and Joe is their big brother. They live near the Enchanted Wood and are friends of the residents of the Faraway Tree. Other characters include:

• The Angry Pixie- He lives in a house with a tiny window and has a habit of throwing cold water or any liquid at hand over people who dare to peep inside.

• An owl lives in the house after the Angry Pixie's. He is a friend of Silky's.

• Silky the fairy. Silky is so named because of her long, silky, golden hair.

• Mr.Watzisname- He cannot remember his name. He sleeps and snores all the time. During a particular episode at the Land of Secrets, Mr. Watzisname discovers that his name is 'Kollamoolitumarellipawkyrollo'. This is forgotten by the end of the episode (even by the man himself) and he goes back to being Mr. Watzisname.

• Dame Washalot- She spends her time washing her clothes and throwing the dirty wash water down the tree. If she has no clothes to wash, she washes the dirty laundry of other people and even the leaves of the Faraway Tree.

• Moonface- Moonface is named for his round face that looks like the moon. His house is likewise round, and filled with curved furniture. There is a slippery-slip in the middle of his house, which is a slide which lets you slide down to the bottom of the Faraway Tree instead of climbing down.

• The Saucepan Man- lives with Mr. Watzisname. His name stems from the fact that he is covered all over with saucepans and kettles. Sometimes, he cannot understand what his friends are saying because he is quite deaf, which is further aggravated by all the noise from the pans and kettles which he carries all the time.

• The Saucepan Man's mother- lives with Dame Washalot. She runs a cake shop.

• Dame Slap- runs a school for bad pixies which in adventures, the friends accidentally land in.