The Enid Blyton Society

Tony Summerfield wrote:I believe that the Fidel Castro look-alike is the Saucepan man, whilst ET is obviously Moonface!

Crumbs - I wonder what Enid Blyton would think if she could see the cover of that 75th Anniversary edition of The Magic Faraway Tree! Incidentally, is it just the second book of the series (which would be a bit odd for a special edition) or is it a 3-in-1 volume? After all, 2014 is the 75th Anniversary of The Enchanted Wood - not of The Magic Faraway Tree.

Courtenay wrote:The Find-Outers covers are not bad as artwork per se, but honestly - they look like something out of Harry Potter. From that kind of illustration, I'd be expecting magic and fantasy, not five children in a 1940s English village solving local mysteries over the hols!

Yes - I do like the style but it might have been better if that particular artist had done the covers for the Faraway Tree and Wishing-Chair books! The Find-Outers covers put me in mind of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Courtenay wrote:And again... Quentin Blake + Roald Dahl = (at least in most instances).
Quentin Blake + Enid Blyton = (or thereabouts).

I must admit I don't really care for Quentin Blake's Roald Dahl illustrations either. In the 1970s Roald Dahl's books had illustrations by various artists and the drawings had much more depth and detail to them, conveying the bizarre, twisted, chilling nature of Dahl's stories much more effectively than Quentin Blake's scribbles.

Anita Bensoussane wrote: I must admit I don't really care for Quentin Blake's Roald Dahl illustrations either. In the 1970s Roald Dahl's books had illustrations by various artists and the drawings had much more depth and detail to them, conveying the bizarre, twisted, chilling nature of Dahl's stories much more effectively than Quentin Blake's scribbles.

Good point, Anita. I think Quentin Blake did a great job of Dahl's books that he was commissioned to illustrate in the first place (I can't imagine The Enormous Crocodile, The BFG, The Twits, George's Marvellous Medicine, Matilda or The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me illustrated by anyone else), but I can't really come at his re-illustrations of the earlier titles like James and the Giant Peach, Danny the Champion of the World, or the two Charlie books. I particularly love Faith Jacques' illustrations for the original edition of Danny.

That said, Dahl's last published children's book, The Minpins, was illustrated by Patrick Benson, and that was definitely the right choice - the illustrations are just exquisite (and this is one where Blake-style cartoons couldn't possibly have done the story justice). I'd post a few examples, but we're getting way off topic here!

I would say above all, regardless of any individual artist's merits or demerits, cutesy cartoony drawings just do NOT go with Enid Blyton!

Poppy wrote:Nothing stands out at all, there, for me. It all looks modern, tacky and just unattractive. The Wishing Chair books, I would say are the worst; just quite boring and look similar to a children's cartoon on the TV - A Little Princess? I can't even really see them attracting the correct age-group. I would have aimed these books at 6-8 yrs, but these covers look so babyish.
The All Aboard book is surely the same illustrator as the Faraway Tree? Alright, but again quite silly and modernised dramatically.

All I can say is that these "artists" have not nearly as much to offer as Tresilian, Soper and Dunlop and several other illustrators from the 40's and 50's. Particularly on Tresilian's artistic/artful Adventure illustrations there are so many details that my eyes feel tempted to wander around each illustrations to take in the scenery, the kids, the animals, boats, planes etc. They are so rich.

I'm awfully glad that I'm not a child of the 90's. I'm very thankful that I had the privilege to grow up with outstanding illustrations when children's books still had wonderful illustrations (also in Norman Dale's books and in some German books translated from English and from American authors like Brisley, Elinor Lyan and Elizabeth Enright's Melendy family volumes).
So far I have not seen one single modern illustrator that comes even close to EB's illustrators.

Courtenay wrote:Dahl's last published children's book, The Minpins, was illustrated by Patrick Benson, and that was definitely the right choice - the illustrations are just exquisite (and this is one where Blake-style cartoons couldn't possibly have done the story justice).

Ah yes - my children had The Minpins when they were young (we've probably still got it somewhere) and the illustrations were lovely. Some elements of the plot reminded me of Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree books.

Chrissie777 wrote:So far I have not seen one single modern illustrator that comes even close to EB's illustrators.

Some books for very young children are beautifully illustrated, e.g. Jane Hissey's "Little Bear" books. For older children, Michael Foreman has drawn some wonderful and stirring illustrations (e.g. for a number of Michael Morpurgo's books), while Tony DiTerlizzi's drawings for Holly Black's The Spiderwick Chronicles are detailed and magical (though the stories are disappointingly thin).

That's one reason I love children's books so much - illustrations! I find it very disappointing when a book doesn't have illustrations (William Corlett's Magician's House series recently - though older editions may have).

Anita Bensoussane wrote: Some books for very young children are beautifully illustrated, e.g. Jane Hissey's "Little Bear" books. For older children, Michael Foreman has drawn some wonderful and stirring illustrations (e.g. for a number of Michael Morpurgo's books), while Tony DiTerlizzi's drawings for Holly Black's The Spiderwick Chronicles are detailed and magical (though the stories are disappointingly thin).

Hello Anita,

I don't know any of these books, but will check them in British bookstores. Michael Morpurgo sounds familiar, he must have been mentioned in some threads.
Actually the illustrator from the first EB short story "Five have a puzzling Time" in the new EBS journal on pages 31 and 31 is pretty good. I don't know his name.
Regarding picture books for little children, I thought the illustrations by Maurice Sendak in "Outside Over There" are dazzling, almost like photos or an old Disney animation movie.

We had a number of incredibly good illustrators of children's books in Australia when I was little (in the 1980s and '90s) - Graeme Base, Julie Vivas, Jane Tanner and Ron Brooks, among others - but they were mainly for picture books, not novels. I can't think of many current novels that have illustrations of any great artistic merit, if they have illustrations at all.

One exception is the stage show tie-in edition of Michael Morpurgo's War Horse, illustrated by Rae Smith, who was the designer for the theatre production - her pictures are sharp, stark, dramatic, and capture the dark themes of the story very well. (I bought a copy of this edition after seeing the show!)

This is the latest Bounty series to come out:-

http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/book ... yadventure" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I have also added the new Adventure covers which came out earlier this month, although I still don't know who the illustrator is.

Thanks very much Tony!

I don't mind those new Bounty covers at all: they have an exciting, adventurous touch to them and unlike many new Blyton covers, the illustrator has preserved the era in which the books were written (without making them uninviting to a modern day child, in my point of view).

Great to see all the Adventure series new covers. Some of them are not so bad, others I think are rather lazy and designed to the wrong age suitability for the books (ie: Circus in particular) Also: I think you may have put the Castle image, under both Castle and Valley in the cave, Tony!

http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/book ... +Adventure" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thanks, Tony. Pleasant colours and scenes for those Bounty books, except for the Six Cousins one. The title The Adventures of the Six Cousins has been used before but it's extremely misleading, as is the picture on the front.

The cover of The Secret of Cliff Castle reminds me of the 1968 Armada cover of The Castle of Adventure!

As for the eight books in the Adventure series, the cover illustrations are wishy-washy and out of proportion, with babyish-looking characters. They're not at all impressive and completely fail to capture the thrill and grandeur of the stories. I suppose the publishers have decided that everything written by Enid Blyton is for little kids! Like Poppy, when I click on The Valley of Adventure I get the cover for The Castle of Adventure. The images are taking ages to load too, but that's probably just our computer.

Thanks Poppy, my brain has been scrambled by severe toothache, but Valley has now replaced the wrongly placed Castle.

There are now 72 books from the Award stable that have had a Bounteous makeover!

I'm sorry to hear about your toothache, Tony and hope that you are OK now.

Thanks for providing the information about books in the Bounty series.

Sorry about your toothache Tony. Hope you are better now. Thanks for putting the new 'Valley' front cover up: I like the background, especially on this one, but the appearance of the characters lets it down for me.

Yes, great covers - I particularly liked Cliff Castle. I rather liked the Adventure covers, even if Valley and Castle look very similar - very green! Island reminded me of the picture of Ming, Anita and me on the Sea of Adventure!



Yes, they might have been on the juvenile side, but I don't think that matters that much.

Moonraker wrote:Yes, they might have been on the juvenile side, but I don't think that matters that much.

It's unclear whether you're talking about the book covers or the trio in the boat, but perhaps it applies to both!