The Wishing-Chair (series)

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:

• Adventures of the Wishing-Chair (1937)
• The Wishing-Chair Again (1950)
• More Wishing-Chair Stories (2000)

The first book, Adventures of the Wishing-Chair, has the distinction of being Enid Blyton's first full-length book — although it is episodic in nature.

Adventures of the Wishing-Chair

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 playhouse. On their first flight, they rescue a pixie called Chinky 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 to various magical places.They also get into trouble due to some invisible paint, and a boy who makes faces, and cannot unmake them. But they also have some good adventures like going to Greatheart, the magician's party or going to Grabbit Gnomes. The children have a most pleasant time with the chair, with some dangerous adventures.

The Wishing-Chair Again

It's the first day of the summer holidays and Peter and Mollie are dying to go on more adventures with their wishing-chair. Peter inadvertently asks to go to the land of "Goodness-knows-where" and on the way, they disturb Sleep-alone, a very grumpy, sleepy, unlikeable hermit who loves to sleep alone, just like his name suggests and ask him where the land of Goodness-knows-where is and he mutters "Go and ask Goodness and leave me alone, will you?", so they do, but in the process the wishing chair is stolen and the only means of transport home is the dream bus, which poor Chinky falls out of and has to walk home, so he's bone-tired the next morning. Peter and Mollie are determined to find their chair and their search leads them to Mr Spells and he ends up saying "What's going on here? I am getting tired of hearing people say this chair is theirs, so could somebody please explain?" and Peter does so and finally they're on their way home. A few days later, the wishing-chair grows wings again, but only grows three, not four but the children decide to ride it anyway and the chair soon ends up flying sideways, so they immediately order the chair to land. They end up in the land of slipperies and when Peter offends one of them, they retaliate by chopping all the chair's wings off, so they need more ointment. Next rainy day, they try the ointment on some of their toys and Mollie accidentally makes Chinky's wand fly too and a strong gust of wind blows them out the window and to Mr Grim's school where mischievous brownies are sent. The brownies may be naughty but it's a horrible place to be; the teacher asks ridiculous questions that he doesn't know the answer to and at dinner time, there's not enough food for every brownie so he says "You haven't brushed your hair! No dinner!" (even though he knows perfectly well that some kinds of brownie and in this case pixie have hair that naturally doesn't lie down, he just doesn't like that particular pixie) and he makes Winks miss out on dinner too, just because he doesn't like him. Later that night, Chinky and a golliwog friend of his round up an army of toys and they force Mr Grim to relinquish the toys. Winks takes up residence in Peter and Mollie's house and they take him on adventures, but unfortunately he spoils them by doing something naughty and is eventually sent back to Mr Grim's school, with a consolation prize of the "Tid-bit" dish Peter won and I must say that even though Winks is a rather naughty brownie, I hope that Mr Grim has improved somewhat, or that a new, more reasonable teacher has taken over, because really, Mr Grim was somewhat unreasonable in his treatment of the brownies

More Wishing-Chair Stories

In this final sequel, a compilation of stories about the Wishing Chair from other books (The Adventures of the Wishing Chair, Enid Blyton's Omnibus and the Enid Blyton Annuals), More Wishing Chair Stories Mollie and Peter are home for the half-term holiday and Chinky and the Wishing-Chair are ready to fly away with them to magical lands. They visit the Land of Wishes and the Land of Chatterboxes, but perhaps the best adventure of all is helping Santa Claus deliver presents on Christmas Eve.

Cameos

The wishing-chair is briefly seen at the end of The Black Dossier by Alan Moore.