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Five Investigate why the Dust Never Settles on Enid Blyton’s Dustjackets.

Hard to know whether it’s a matter of logistics or supply chain management, but little tikes are still hoovering up those Famous Fives and Malory Towers with their fancy modern covers, and why is that, with by now, several generations of children’s literature challenging them to think beyond post-World War 2 Middle England? A puzzling literary impasse, but here to help solve the mystery before moving on to greener fields of reading opportunities, are the people working on the front line, with their fingers on the pulse of childhood reading – Kaitlin Davitt, a manager in Hodges Figgis and the Children’s Area Support for Waterstones in the Republic of Ireland, Caoimhe Creed, Fingal Libraries Librarian, Caragh de Paor, Post-Primary English Teacher in Gaelcholáiste an Phiarsaigh in Rathfarnham, and Emma Farragher, Assistant Professor in the School of Language, Literacy and Early Childhood Education in Dublin City University.

About the series

Spiffing Yarns: the Strange Allure of Enid Blyton, is about much more than the childhood experience of reading Enid Blyton’s books and the age-old children’s classics through the eyes of older and younger readers. It’s about advocacy for children’s reading, using Enid Blyton as the springboard for a much wider discussion about modern childhood reading, shared reading, and the benefits of reading, discussed by children and teenagers, as well as by librarians, booksellers, teachers, authors, and children’s literature experts, who will attempt to deconstruct and examine critical leitmotifs in children’s literature and how they have slowly moved from political incorrectness to issues of social justice