by Anne Digby
‘Dad, I’ve behaved stupidly, I’ve let you down. I’m so sorry—’
‘Hush,’ said his joyful father. He soothed his son’s brow. ‘I know all about it now. I’m the only one who’s behaved stupidly. But I promise you, Roger, things will be very different in the future.’
There was just time for Patrick to change into whites, find his beloved tennis racket and fill the vacant place in the second team. Elizabeth had begged Mr Johns to allow him to play.
He was so happy to be back in the team. But he was sorry to hear that Roger had been knocked over by a car and had had to go to hospital for a check-up. He was very surprised to learn that Roger had been the person behind the beastly tricks, but relieved that none of it had been anything to do with Elizabeth.
So she did not dislike him, after all!
Whyteleafe defeated their old rivals that day, and Patrick put up a very fine performance. There was much cheering and clapping as he came off the court. It was his play that had made all the difference.
Patrick walked up to Elizabeth and in full view of everyone, gave her a big bear hug.
‘Will you forgive me for being so beastly?’ he asked, in embarrassment. ‘It was so clever of you to find my racket that day. Fancy your noticing that the boot of the Beast’s car was open, just a few inches. If you hadn’t noticed that, I would have lost my place in the team. Everything would have been completely different.’
Over on the bank, Arabella watched and felt grumpy.
Why did people always end up liking Elizabeth?
Elizabeth just stood in the sunshine and gave a happy little sigh. She was pleased that she was staying on at Whyteleafe over half-term. It was the best school in the whole world.
She thought of all the effort she had put into trying to help John Terry. In the end, he had won the cup and surprised the whole school with no help from her at all! But she was proud to have kept his secret.
The person she had really helped was Patrick. And even that was an accident!
She still didn’t know why the racket had been hidden in such an unlikely place. Though she learnt later that Roger had planned, in fact, to hide it in one of the garages – until Mr Leslie, the science master, suddenly appeared on the back drive. Roger, in a panic, had fled, thrusting Patrick’s racket into the nearest car boot as he went!
But there was one thing that Elizabeth never did find out. The little song she had taught Sophie, about Patrick being made of slugs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails, was the inspiration behind Roger’s failed plan with the tennis tin. He had heard Sophie and her friends chanting it as they skipped one day and it had given him his brainwave.
With the Naughtiest Girl around, these unfortunate things just seemed to happen!
Enid Blyton has been one of the world’s best-loved storytellers for over 70 years. Her interest in writing began as a child, and before she loved receiving letters from the children who read her books, she enjoyed working with them as a teacher. The Naughtiest Girl stories are inspired by real schools and experiences. Turn the page to learn more about Enid as a child and as a teacher. Afterwards, you might like to write about your school and teachers and the people in your class!
11 August 1897 Enid Blyton was born in East Dulwich, London. Two brothers are born after her – Hanly (b. 1899) and Carey (b. 1902)
1911 Enid enters a children’s poetry competition and is praised for her writing. She’s on the path to becoming a bestselling author . . .
1916 Enid begins to train as a teacher in Ipswich. By the time she is 21, she is a fully-qualified Froebel teacher, and starts work at a school in Kent.
1917 Enid’s first ‘grown-up’ publication – three poems in Nash’s Magazine.
June 1922 Enid’s first book is published. It’s called Child Whispers.
1926 Enid begins editing – and writes – the phenomenal Sunny Stories for Little Folks magazine. (She continues in this role for 26 years!)
1927 So vast is Enid’s output that she has to learn to type. (But she still writes to children by hand.)
1931 Having married Hugh Pollock in 1924, the couple’s first child, Gillian, is born. Imogen, their second daughter, was born in 1935.
1942 The Famous Five is launched with Five on a Treasure Island.
1949 The first appearance of The Secret Seven and of Noddy mark this year as special.
1953 Enid moves away from Sunny Stories to launch Enid Blyton’s Magazine. She is now renowned throughout the world – she even established her own company, called Darrell Waters Limited (the surname of her second husband).
1962 Enid Blyton becomes one of the first and most important children’s authors to be published in paperback. Now, she reaches even more readers than ever before.
28 November 1968 Enid dies in her sleep, in a nursing home in Hampstead.
Elizabeth is used to getting her own way, so it’s a challenge to adapt to life at Whyteleafe where the students make their own rules. That said, the student council don’t have many rules at all. Here are the ones explained to the new children in The Naughtiest Girl in the School . . .
‘We place all the money we get into this box, and we draw from it two pounds a week each. The rest of the money is used to buy anything that any of you especially want – but you have to state at the weekly Meeting what you need the money for, and the Jury will decide if you may have it.’
‘The second rule is that if we have any complaint at all, we must bring it to the Meeting and announce it there, so that everyone may hear it, and decide what is to be done with it. Please be sure you understand the difference between a real complaint and telling tales, because telling tales is also punished. If you are not sure of the difference, ask your monitor before you bring your complaint to the Meeting.’
In that first book in the series we learn that, ‘monitors are chosen for their common sense, their loyalty to the school and its ideas, and their good character.’
Do you think Whyteleafe’s rules are fair?
What rules would you establish if you had a student council?
What do you think would be poor qualities in a monitor?
Why not discuss the answers with the people in your class or perhaps your family?
During her lifetime, Enid Blyton received many hundreds of letters from the thousands of children – all over the world – who enjoyed reading her books. She took great pleasure in replying to them. She also loved meeting children and, it is said, that the suggestion for an autobiography came from a young fan who presented Enid with a list of questions. He thought he might write a book about his favourite author, called Enid Blyton – the Story of Her Life, but his mother suggested that Enid might write it herself. And so she did. The Story of My Life was published in 1952. Enid wrote about her family, where she lived, the inspiration for her books and her writing process. She also talked about her childhood. Have you ever imagined what your favourite writers were like as children – and what important events may have shaped their future lives? Here is an extract from The Story of My Life, which takes us back to Enid’s younger days . . .
My happiest childhood times were when I was reading and dreaming, when I was playing games with other children, and when I was out in the country or by the sea. Very much like your happiest times, I expect!
The games I played were Red Indians, Burglars and Policemen, Making a House somewhere – behind a bush, or up a tree, or under a table. We had tops and hoops and marbles as the seasons came round.
We played a great many card games, because we all loved cards. So do my own girls. We played Snap and Happy Families, Old Maid and Beggar-My-Neighbour.
We also played board games such as Snakes and Ladders (and sometimes Ladders and Snakes – going up the snakes and down the ladders, instead of the other way round!). When I was six my father taught me to play draught
s and a little later he taught me to play chess. That was just before I was seven. He thought that all young children should learn to play chess. I enjoyed the games immensely.
I think my father was more of a naturalist than anything else. I didn’t even know what a naturalist was, at that time – all I knew was that my father loved the countryside, loved flowers and birds and wild animals, and knew more about them than anyone I had ever met. And what was more he was willing to take me with him on his expeditions, and share his love and his knowledge with me!
In those days it was considered quite ordinary to collect birds’ eggs. Nowadays we teach children not to, because it distresses the birds and it might lead to many kinds gradually becoming extinct.
My father collected birds’ eggs, and he had a cabinet of little drawers full of beautiful eggs, neatly arranged and labelled. One of the things I had to do to help him was to insert my hand into holes in trees to see if any nests were there, and to feel for eggs.
I never did like taking the eggs. I did so hope the bird wouldn’t mind. Fortunately my father never wanted more than one egg. He never knew how scared I was of putting my hand down into those small holes. Once I heard a hissing noise down a hole, and I was sure it was an adder hiding there. I was afraid of being bitten, but I didn’t like to say so.
Weekend after weekend I went out with my father. Looking back, it seems as if those days were always warm, always sunny, and that the sky was always as deeply blue as the cornflowers in my garden, or as faintly blue as the harebells on the common.
We were lucky to have woods and commons, ponds and lanes so near. We explored everywhere and everything – watching the lizards play on the sunny banks, listening to the willow-warblers singing, poking down a hole that my father said badgers had been in, looking for the white violets we knew always blossomed in a certain dell.
All my childhood was steeped in the sunshine of the woods and commons and lanes, and what I didn’t find out from nature herself, I read about in books, and then searched for it again. I was perfectly happy, even when I wandered about alone, finding flowers to look up in our reference books, trying to discover what bird was singing, learning the difference between a thrush’s nest and a blackbird’s, and a hundred other things.
‘One day I’ll put all these things into a book,’ I said, though I didn’t tell anyone that, of course.
In 1920, Enid Blyton became a governess to the four Thompson children, whose ages ranged from four to ten. The family lived in Surbiton, in Surrey, in a house called ‘Southernhay’. Enid had a small room which overlooked the garden, and it was there that she wrote many of her stories. Enid’s tiny class often had lessons outdoors in the summer months.
Enid was very popular with her students, because her lessons were both practical and creative. She worked with them to put on performances for which they made props, costumes and invitations – and even sold tickets.
In 1941, she published a long story called ‘What They Did at Miss Brown’s School’, which was divided into monthly episodes. It’s been hard to find for many years, but you can read extracts in these new editions of the Naughtiest Girl books. The character of Miss Brown and her tiny class is very much based on Enid Blyton and her school at the Thompsons’ . . .
Here’s the next extract . . .
6. June. The Surprising Silkworms.
‘MISS BROWN, you’ve got a ladder all the way up the back of your stocking!’ said Mary one morning.
‘Oh dear! And these are my very best silk stockings!’ sighed Miss Brown. ‘How I wish I could spin pure silk like the silkworms do! Then I could make my stockings for nothing!’
The children laughed. ‘Do silkworms really spin silk, Miss Brown?’ asked John.
‘John! Have you never kept silkworms and seen what they do?’ said Miss Brown in surprise.
‘Never,’ said John. ‘I’ve kept ordinary caterpillars, Miss Brown, but they didn’t spin silk or anything exciting like that.’
None of the others had kept silkworms either. Miss Brown made up her mind at once that that should be June’s fun.
‘It is a little late to get silkworm eggs,’ she said, ‘but maybe we can still buy them. If not, we’ll buy the caterpillars themselves. I’ll write a letter now, straightaway, and order them. It will be June tomorrow, so there is no time to lose.’
By a piece of luck the man she wrote to still had silkworm eggs to sell. They were a shilling a hundred. Miss Brown bought a hundred. They arrived on June the second and the children looked at them with interest.
‘They are round and flat, and not much bigger than a pin’s head, Miss Brown,’ said John.
‘Won’t the silkworms be tiny!’ cried Susan.
‘Yes, at first,’ said Miss Brown, ‘but later on they will be longer and fatter than your fingers, Susan!’
Susan couldn’t believe it. ‘What do we feed them on?’ she asked.
‘Well, they like mulberry leaves better than anything,’ said Miss Brown. ‘But they will eat lettuce too. If we could get mulberry leaves we should find the boxes pleasanter to clean out each day, for mulberry-fed silkworms leave only a dry litter behind them, but lettuce-fed ones leave a moist, unpleasant litter to clear up.’
‘Well, Miss Brown, I know where there is a mulberry tree!’ cried John. ‘In my granpa’s garden. I can go there each day and get fresh leaves.’
‘Good, John,’ said Miss Brown, pleased. ‘Well, we had better have leaves each day now, for these eggs may hatch at any time.’
‘Are we all going to share them?’ asked Susan, who always liked to have something of her own.
‘I’ll tell you what we will do,’ said Miss Brown. ‘These eggs will not all hatch out at once, but in batches. We will say that the first-hatched batch shall be John’s, because he is to bring the leaves. The next shall be Mary’s, the next Peter’s and the last Susan’s, because she is the youngest.’
‘That will be fun!’ said John. ‘We’ll have to have four boxes. And shall we have to cover the silkworms with glass or something, Miss Brown, to stop them crawling away. I remember my caterpillars all crawled away last year when I forgot to cover them.’
‘Oh no,’ said Miss Brown, ‘silkworm grubs are not like ordinary caterpillars, John – they are “tame” and will not crawl away from their boxes. You see, for thousands of years they have been kept for their silk, so they have lost the ways of wild caterpillars. We don’t need to cover them – but we must remember not to leave them by the open window or the birds may come in and steal them!’
The next day about twenty of the silkworm eggs hatched! The children were so pleased. They looked into the box-lid, where Miss Brown had placed the batch of eggs, and saw what looked like tiny, short bits of black cotton crawling about!
‘Gracious! Are those tiny black things the silkworms?’ asked Susan. ‘I can hardly see them!’
‘Yes – some of the eggs have hatched,’ said Miss Brown. ‘The grubs ate their way out of the egg-shell. Now, John, where is your first lot of mulberry leaves? Good! We will put them into this second box-lid – and then I want you to watch me lift these tiny caterpillars with my paint brush. I don’t want to harm them by lifting them with my fingers, but I can easily lift them on to the fresh leaves with a brush. Each day you must do this, John, so watch carefully.’
John had placed his mulberry leaves into a second shallow box-lid. Miss Brown carefully lifted up each tiny black thread-like caterpillar to the leaves. Then she took a magnifying-glass from her desk and lent it to each child in turn so that they might see how the tiny caterpillars began to nibble the leaves.
No eggs hatched the next day, but another lot had hatched into tiny black threads the day after. Mary lifted them gently on to her leaves in a third box. There was a fourth box too – or rather box-lid – and in this John placed his caterpillars whilst he cleaned
out the other box.
‘We must always have an extra odd box,’ said Miss Brown. ‘Because we can’t clean out a box while the caterpillars are in it. Now I wonder when your caterpillars are going to hatch, Peter!’
They hatched the very next day, and Peter was delighted. He, too, had a box-lid given him and some mulberry leaves.
Poor Susan had to wait a whole week before the last lot of eggs hatched – but as there were thirty-four she was delighted. ‘I’ve got the most!’ she said. ‘I had to wait the longest, but I’ve got the most.’
‘Good for you,’ said John. ‘I say, Miss Brown, aren’t my silkworms growing! They are three times the size of Susan’s!’
‘I’ve got twenty-two,’ said Peter, counting.
‘I’ve got twenty-one,’ said John.
‘I’ve got twenty-three,’ said Mary.
‘And I’ve got thirty-four,’ said Susan. ‘That makes exactly a hundred.’
How those silkworms grew! They became a pearly-grey colour and ate all day long. The children soon found a quick way of changing them from one box to another. This is what they did.
When John came to school in the morning with his new mulberry leaves, each child put a few fresh leaves into his or her box. The caterpillars soon smelt out the new leaves and crawled on to them in delight. Then all that the children had to do when cleaning them was to lift the new leaves and caterpillars into the odd box and clean out the old box! They did their cleaning one by one, so there was always an odd box to move the silkworms into, and the odd box left over was clean and ready to use the next day.
One day Susan was very much upset because when she counted her caterpillars she found there were only thirty! ‘Four have gone!’ she said, almost in tears.
