The Enid Blyton Society

Has anyone else read the "Jill" series?

I read a few as a kid but I haven't re-read them in years. I do have the ones my Mum had owned, they are sitting on my bookshelf and I will one day re-read them. I used to enjoy reading them but they were never my favourites I had an obsession with horse books for several years.

Fraid I never read any.

My sister and I had all the "Jill" pony books when we were children. Out in the garden we would make "jumps" from things like brooms, canes and buckets, and ride around the "course" on our space-hoppers, pretending we were in a gymkhana!

Four or five years ago I found five of the books in a charity shop (I don't know what happened to our childhood copies) and I re-read them. I still enjoyed the stories even though I've never been horse-riding, and after I'd finished them I posted them to my sister. As I once said in another thread, the child characters struck me as being like Enid Blyton characters in some respects - independent, determined, trustworthy, full of ideas and free to go off by themselves and do their own thing - though they were concerned with "horsey" activities rather than adventures and mysteries.

My sister told me that modern copies have been edited, though not to the same extent as Enid Blyton books. Jill's horse Black Boy is now called Danny Boy (maybe someone thought Black Boy was racist!!) and references to a groom smoking have been removed.

I bought some of the ones republished by Fidra a year or so ago. Jill's horse is now called Black Boy again. I think they are the original text with updated covers.

That's good to know!