The Faraway Tree (series)
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| Author | Enid Blyton |
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| Cover artist | Georgina Hargreaves |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Publisher | Newnes |
| Published | 1939–51 |
| No. of books | 4 |
The Faraway Tree is a series of popular novels for children by British author Enid Blyton. The titles in the series are The Enchanted Wood (1939), The Magic Faraway Tree (1943), The Folk of the Faraway Tree (1946) and Up the Faraway Tree (1951).
The stories take place in an enchanted forest in which a gigantic magical tree grows – the eponymous "Faraway Tree". The tree is so tall that its topmost branches reach into the clouds and it is wide enough to contain small houses carved into its trunk. The forest and the tree are discovered by three children named Joe, Beth and Frannie, who move into a house nearby. It is then that they embark on adventures to the top of the tree.
The first title of the main trilogy, The Enchanted Wood, was published in 1939, although the Faraway Tree and Moon-Face had already made a brief appearance in 1936 in The Yellow Fairy Book. A picture-strip book, Up the Faraway Tree, was published in 1951. Over the years, the Faraway Tree stories have been illustrated by various artists including Dorothy Wheeler, Rene Cloke, Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone, and Georgina Hargreaves.
In the first novel in the series, Jo, Bessie and Fanny move to live near a large wood. One day, they go for a walk in the wood and discover an enormous tree whose branches seem to reach into the clouds. This is the Faraway Tree.
When the children climb the Faraway Tree they discover it is inhabited by different magical creatures, including Moon-Face, Silky the fairy, The Saucepan Man, Dame Washalot, Mr. Watzisname and the Angry Pixie. They befriend some of these creatures, in particular Moon-face and Silky. At the very top of the tree they discover a ladder which leads them to a magical land. This land is different on each visit, because each place moves on from the top of the tree to make way for a new land. The children are free to come and go, but they must leave before the land moves on, or they will be stuck there until that same land returns to the Faraway Tree. In various chapters, one of the children gets stuck in the land.
The lands at the top are sometimes extremely unpleasant – for example the Land of Dame Slap, an aggressive school teacher; and sometimes fantastically enjoyable - notably the Land of Birthdays, the Land of Goodies, the Land of Take-What-You-Want and the Land of Do-As-You-Please.
The first land the three children visit is the Roundabout Land, where they give some cake to two rabbits, and the rabbits dig a hole for themselves and the three children. The last land they visit in this book is the Land of Birthdays, where the brownies and the inhabitants of the Faraway Tree celebrate Bessie's birthday.
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