In our never ending quest to make Saboor read, Jun bought him a Secret Seven book sometime back. Saboor actually liked it quite a bit and read it entirely! I did notice that the print was new and it didn’t seem like the Secret Seven type of book I had when I was small.

I suppose everyone realises that they are getting on in years when they talk of ‘in my days’…and Saboor has actually begun to snap at me when I get into that mode!

But this isn’t what I started writing about in this post.

I remember that I started out with reading Enid Blyton books when I was around nine and got hooked to them pretty badly. Back then, Abbu would get one for me in the holidays and it was like a special treat because it would take me that long to finish reading them!

The good old covers!

I also remember saving my pocket money (which was all of Rs 2 per day) to buy a Famous Five and it was such a thrill to get hold of a new book back then. As good as if you got hold of a lovely chocolate and you were unwrapping it and savouring every moment of it!

By the time I was around 14 or so, I had a sizable collection although it seems paltry now. I used to stash them in my desk drawer and hide the keys so that Jun wouldn’t be able to get them and I used to think myself so ingenious whenever he couldn’t find the keys! Gosh…I feel so childish just thinking about it and well, it was childish back then.

Recently, Saboor dragged me to this book fair near our home. There was a huge hall, filled with books and he discovered the Enid Blyton section. He made me buy a couple of Secret Sevens and then I pounced on the St. Clares series with glee.

I only had Second Form at St Clares with me and all these years it never occurred to me to get hold of the others and read them. I probably thought that they were not available.

Anyhow, Egmont has reprinted the books, and somewhere along the way, the covers have lost their charm. But anyway, I went ahead and bought the whole series. Now that’s what I like about being a grown up. No pleading with mummy to buy one more book and no saving money for just one book!

Aah..these days, I am living in the world of St Clares!

And reading them as an adult, there are plenty of things that occur to me,such as the fact that how come these girls are so old and they’re still in school! No boyfriend? No boys at all actually! And not even a whisper of regular stuff like getting your periods and all that which would be a part of living in a girl’s school. I think Ms Blyton would have rather not write than write something so scandalous!

I’ve never compared JK Rowling with Enid Blyton before and don’t intend to also, but one thing that I like about the JK is that she doesn’t mollycoddle you like Blyton. Yes, people have raved against her for being a sexist and everything, but I don’t know why she preferred to live in a cotton wool wrapped existence where her characters never grow in normal ways where they begin to like boys and want to try and be pretty! What’s wrong in that anyway?

This isn’t a discourse on her books, but just something that occurred to me as I read Third Form at St. Clares today. One of the new girls, Libby has a brother Will. And Carlotta the wild child from the circus becomes fast friends with Libby and impresses Will like anything. At this juncture, you would expect a romance budding between the two. But no. Trust Enid Blyton to nip that in the bud. Libby’s cousin Fern who has a huge crush on Will (read that as terribly fond of Will) is jealous that he is now considering Carlotta to be his sister!!!! I almost fell down from the auto seat when I read that bit! (i was reading it on my way to work.) By the way, this book was written by Pamela Cox in 2000 and I wish I’d known before reading it which is why there is mention of a boy at all. I doubt EB would have introduced him if she had written it.

Phew! I’ve got just one more left, and apparently I’ve missed out on buying one of the set, Claudine at St. Clares.

Anyway, to each their own. I truly relished reading every single one of these books when I was a child and I still love reading them. And I’m glad she was such a prolific writer too although I do wish she’d ended the St Clares series properly.