Wednesday, the 26th of June 2024 and time for Shelf Control once again! Shelf Control is a weekly feature created by Lisa at Bookshelf Fantasies, and celebrates the books waiting to be read on your TBR piles/mountains. Since early January 2023, Shelf Control has moved base here to Literary Potpourri. To participate, all you do is pick a book from your TBR pile, and write a post about it–what it’s about, when/where you got it, why you want to read it and such. If you participate, don’t forget to share your links in the comments. I’ll check out your picks of course, and also add you to the list of participants in this post
More than a shelf control post, today’s is just a reminder to myself to continue reading a series I’d started back in 2021 but stopped after book 1, even though I loved book 1 and learnt something new from it (‘cows have no upper teeth’ which I was ashamed to have not known then). Loosely termed the ‘Family series’ on goodreads, this series sees three child Mike, Belinda and Ann spending time with their family in different places–aboard a boat or ship, in a caravan or on a farm.
While in book 1, they make two caravans their temporary home when their father returns from the war and also spent some time on their uncle’s farm (thus the cows), this second one has them spending their holidays aboard a beautiful houseboat on a canal, the Saucy Jane and hence, The Saucy Jane Family. I love these books for their lovely descriptions of life wherever the particular story happens to be set. Blyton also usually incorporates her vast knowledge of nature into things somehow which I always enjoy.
This is also a short book under a hundred pages in the print version and even shorter in the e-version and will make for a quick read when I want something light. I did read some of these books as a child but not all, so this may or may not be a revisit.
Are you familiar with this series? Which were/are your favourite Blyton books?
If you’re joining in with Shelf Control this week, do leave your link so that I can add you to the participants’ list in this post!
Literary Potpourri 
I don’t remember this series at all but it sounds rather lovely.
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They’re sweet and quick reads. The first had plenty of nature knowledge, birds and such and farm stuff. And I liked that it showed the children getting over their fears and working at their flaws.
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I have not heard of this Blyton series.
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She did write 700 plus books. I had read a couple of these but not all as a child but there are many others of her standalones and series I’m only discovering now.
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I’ve never heard of this Blyton series which reminds me of what a prolific author she was. I used to have a book of short stories by her about different animals, a sort of Blyton meets the Just So stories which I loved. She really did have a huge amount of nature knowledge.
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She was indeed, there are so many I’m only discovering now. The animal stories sounds lovely. As a child I had her nonfic animal book which had wonderful introductions to English wildlife. The Adventures of Pip are also excellent for the nature aspects, especially small animals and insects. There used to be her ‘country walk’ pieces too, in each season highlighting what one might see.
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I never came across this series but I was certainly a big Blyton fan, primarily of The Adventure series, which was published in the US, and St. Clare’s and Malory Towers, which were not. My sister and I got a couple on a trip to Toronto and persuaded relatives visiting London to bring back more. We played “boarding school” all the time. My sister even made it to boarding school for one year! I don’t think there were any midnight feasts but there were some not-so-funny pranks – one was the seniors took every book out of the school library and put them on the front lawn in the middle of the night. Thousands of books. It took the poor librarians days to get them back in the right places. Another time someone put vodka into the orange juice containers so everyone got screwdrivers for breakfast.
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Interestingly here in India we had access to both American and British children’s books so the best of both worlds; of course with teh sheer number of books Blyton wrote it was (and is) impossible to know them all. I used o love the St Clares and Malory Towers too; the former I had many of and read and reread often. I used to play more of the camping type games from The Famous Five books setting up my tent on our balcony complete with canned food and such.
Oh dear, I can just imagine the look on the librarians’ faces when they saw the books on the lawn, poor things. And what was the reaction to the screwdrivers?
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