Over these past two weeks I have been reading Enid Blyton's " The Magical Adventures of the Wishing-Chair" to help progress my understanding of Children's fairy tales. This classic story was a favourite of mine growing up. Having not read it for a while I decided to delve back into my childhood and re read it.
I had forgotten how vast Blyton's imagination was. The story drops two children, Mollie and Peter into different worlds whilst they undertake an adventure together alongside a pixie named Chinky. Blyton uses detailed descriptions of each character that the children meet along their journey and this is something I definitely want to do in my own.
Although the language is a little out dated having been written in 1937, the story still holds meaning and a sense of value within the fantasy genre. We get to escape the real world and meet various creatures; from goblins to witches to magicians. Although the children have a lot of fun riding on the wishing chair they do come to a halt when they are greeted by wizards and giants. The children team up with Chinky, creating a sort of "dream team" in order to get out of these awful situations. Such as when they are trapped in the castle with 'The Snoogle' near the end of the story.
After having just recently finished the book I have taken inspiration from the intricate detail used to describe each character as an individual. I also like the idea of everything coming to life (the chair) and how an object plays a big part in the story. The children are on an ongoing adventure and I like that. I like how both the children and the reader don't know where they are going to end up. Whether that be an open country field or a castle with an endless amount of rooms.
The idea of morphing is interesting to me as within the fairy tale genre anything goes and I want to create characters which are memorable to the reader and ones no one has ever heard of before. Blyton also brings in an 'old wife' tale' when Mollie and Peter's neighbour visits. They told their neighbour that if he pulls a face and the wind changes his face will stay like that - and of course the wind changed and it came true. I enjoyed this element of the story as it is something that parents would say to their children and obviously it would never happen. Yet by Blyton including this it made the fairy tale come alive as she has intertwined Mollie and Peter's 'fantasy world' (with the wishing chair) and the real world (with their family and friends).
In my previous post I discussed how every traditional children's fairy tale has a "loyal" character. Within this story the loyal character is most definitely the wishing chair. The chair saves the children when it is most needed and always comes back to save them no matter what. I think this is important even within an adult fairy tale (which I want to attempt) as a story can be as dark as you like but an element of hope must always be there. I believe this because every story needs a little bit of hope to guide the protagonist through their journey.
I am now moving on to adult fairy tales and I am currently reading Briar Rose by Jane Yolen- so far so good.
Sian X.
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