The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton’s beloved children’s adventure, is to get a modern makeover with a lesson about sexism. Jacqueline Wilson has proven that she can update old stories. She's taken on What Katy Did, The Railway Children and Five Children and It, and all have been fantastic success stories. But telling stories set in someone else's world is quite a different thing. Jacqueline has written a wonderful adventure story, full of fun and magic. But she hasn't captured Enid Blyton's tone in the way that, for example, Pamela Cox did in her Malory Towers continuations.

Jacqueline Wilson is writing a new version of the story, updated for the 21st century, in which three siblings named Milo, Mia and Birdy discover the enchanted wood. Voices: Roy Hudd, Richard Pearce, Kate Harbour, John Baddeley, Jimmy Hibbert, Janet James and David Holt.We loved the characters of the new children. They were developed well and were each very relatable.

I hope that any children reading this will love it as much as I did as a child. I certainly enjoyed this version but it won't take the place in my heart of Enid Blyton's original. I was a Faraway tree obsessed child, revisiting the series with my Faraway Tree obsessed 5yo, so this was extremely anticipated.. and a huge disappointment. The timeline may have moved into modern day, but the cast of magical characters largely remains the same. This was pretty much fine, though both my daughter and I found the stories less magical, less imaginative, and more long winded than the originals. There weren’t many new magical elements introduced, the lands were fairly uninspired, being themes explored a lot in contemporary children’s fiction (unicorns, dragons, princes and princesses), and the pace of the story was much slower. The Enchanted Wood (1939), The Magic Faraway Tree (1943) and The Folk of the Faraway Tree (1946) are the original Faraway Tree books written by Enid Blyton. In 1952 she altered an earlier book, originally called The Yellow Fairy Book (1936), to make it part of the Faraway Tree world. It is now published as The Magic Faraway Tree: Adventure of the Goblin Dog. The text of all these books was reviewed and minor editorial amendments were made where necessary (to correct errors, and to bring the text in line with our editorial standards as described above) when the books were first published by Hodder Children’s Books in 2020-21.Alexander Antscherl, editorial director at Enid Blyton Entertainment, said: “The book has got some nods to gender equality between girls and boys, which you didn’t always see in the original books. Mrs Wilson has retained the idea of magical lands at the top of the tree, but included some of her own: the Land of Dragons and the Land of Unicorns. But when Moon-Face expresses a Blyton-esque sentiment about girls being required to help with domestic tasks, while boys do something more exciting, he is immediately educated on the subject of gender equality.