Customer Reviews

The Magic Faraway Tree (The Faraway Tree)

5 star:		(87)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I read lots of books as a child, many by Enid Blyton, but this has to be the best by far. It's all about 4 children, Bessie, Fanny, Jo and Dick and all the adventures that they had with their fairy friends in the Magic Faraway Tree. Even after 25 years I can still remember what "toffee shocks" and "pop biscuits" are. I'm now reading it to my 6 year old twins and it's magical to hear the excitement as they long to ride the "slipery slip" and make up their own versions of Saucepan Man's silly songs. If you have children, buy them this book, they will love it!!!

I read these books as a 6 year old, again as a teenager and countless times since. I can only echo what previous reviewers have already written - fantastic, every single word. The characters are imaginative yet believeable, the children are well brought up and likeable and the adventures make you green with envy.

Unfortunately I have mislaid my copies and sought to replace them. However, I discovered that the new reprints have changed the children's names from Joe, Bessie, Fanny and Dick, to Joe, Beth, Frannie and Rick. Pathetic. Definitely buy it, but buy secondhand copies to read it the way that Ms Blyton intended.

I can not recommend this book enough!I read all the Faraway Tree stories when I was a child and out of the hundreds of books that i consequently read, it is the only one that I have bought to put away to read to my daughter when she is older.

The book is based around the magical adventures that Joe,Beth and Frannie encounter when they climb up the Faraway Tree. I can still remember the excitement of reading about the fantastic lands that they visited and wishing that I could find a Faraway Tree of my very own!

Enid Blyton is a fantastic author and the writing describing characters such as Silky the fairy, Moonface and the slippery-slip slide and Mr Saucepan man will bring the magic alive and boost and capture a child's imagination.

This book is a perfect gift to give a child to encourage a love of reading and I think it would be hard to find a book that adults will love reading to their child as much as this one.

It is a book for the young and the young at heart who wish they still believed in MAGIC!

I love this book, and the two that follow it. Magical, exciting, powerful and memorable, I can honsestly say it is among my favourite things of my childhood. I have so many memories of this book. MoonFace eating too much toffee and not being able to warn the children of the danger they are about to head into, that AMAZING slide, those sweets that pop in your mouth (how MUCH did i want them!) the anticipation of which land would be at the top, good old saucepanman. and was it "whatsisface" that was half deaf?
Brilliant reading for a child. To give your child a REAL imagination, an interest in reading, and memories that echo naievity, hope, fantasy,friendship,adventure and childhood wonder, give them this.

This book was read to the infants class I was in by our teacher Mrs Kensit - she bought this book alive (with all the proper appropriate voices)and we were all totally captivated 5 year olds. I have read this book to children both boys and girls who were equally enthralled - I have re-read it and the others in the series many times and I am now 55! It is still as magical as it was 50 years ago.

Such a lovely book. I was expecting it to be normal novel-sized, but the particular book we were sent is huge! And colourful and one of the most beautifully illustrated books. I bought it for my daughter who's experiencing the magic of these books just like I did as a child. And the pictures are really making it an even more magical experience.

As we read it the stories are coming back to me. It's amusing me that in this version, some of the names have changed; Fanny has become Franny and Dick is now Rick. And I'm sure some other things have changed over time too to make them more PC. But we're both enjoying it a lot. My daughter was 4 or 5 when we started reading this series, but I would recommend it for all children, young and old. Read these books and be transformed into a lovely, innocent world where children can go off into the woods by themselves and stay there until dinnertime. Going up trees, meeting up with strange creatures and visiting strange lands, and eating pop-cakes to their hearts content. Innocent escapism at its best.

Bought this to read with my 5 year old daughter. Found all the names changed. Joe Beth and Frannie indeed. My daughter wouldn't accept the new names, and why should she. I ended up taking the book back. Don't buy this PC rubbish, buy a copy of the 1992 mammoth edition instead.

Dame Slap, who had me under the bed covers quivering with joyful fear, as my Mum read this to me at bedtime is now called DAME SNAP! This cannot be forgiven, and sums up what is wrong with the world today. This version is too PC, if you read the original to your children you can explain how things have changed over time. The use of language can be discussed (ie the word "queer" instead of strange) and even Golliwogs can be introduced into the evenings discussion. Enid was so talented, I have only just realised how prolific she was. By the 1939 version...it is great!

Whoever felt it necessary to change the names of the characters in this book, caused a lot of disappointment in our house! We have already read two well-battered collections of these wonderful stories, and then suddenly Jo, Bessie, Fanny and Dick are to become Joe, Beth, Frannie and Rick? It's a bit hard to take them seriously anymore.

Isn't half the point of books that they take you to a different place, time and world? So what's wrong with old fashioned names?

The illustrations are awful, unimaginative and uninteresting. But, fortunately the original idea of the story is as fascinating to my 5 year old as it was to me so I give it 4 stars, but with a severe health warning to anyone who has read the originals!!

The Magic Faraway Tree along with Folk of the Faraway Tree and The Enchanted Wood are 3 of the very best books ever written. I remember reading them as a child and recently bought them for my 5 year old niece. They brought back all of those magical memories and left such a warm feeling of nostalgia that I bought them for myself aswell. The concept is a magic tree, in which various fairy folk live, is simply enormous and reaches right up to the clouds where there's a different land every week. These range from fun ones like The Lands of Take-What-You-Want and and Do-As-You-Please to more 'sinister' ones such as Dame-Slap's School and The Land of Tempers. Adventure is always at hand and the imagination runs over-time. Just what every kid needs to wean them off computer games and into books - and adults to re-live their childhoods. BUY IT NOW!!!!!