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The Enchanted Wood
E-Books > Enid Blyton Series > Others Books > The enchanted woodIn the first novel in the series, Jo, Bessie and Fanny (edited to Joe, Beth and Frannie in revised editions) move to live near a large forest, which the locals call "The Enchanted Wood". One day they go for a walk in the wood and discover it really is enchanted. They encounter a group of elves who have been robbed of important papers by a gnome. They chase the gnome and recover the papers, but the gnome himself escapes up a huge tree whose branches seem to reach into the clouds. This is the Faraway Tree. Against the elves' advice, the children climb the Faraway Tree. They discover that it is inhabited by magical people, including Moon-Face, Silky the fairy, The Saucepan Man, Dame Washalot, Mr. Watzisname and the Angry Pixie, whose houses are carved into the trunk. They befriend some of these people, in particular Moon-Face and Silky. At the very top of the tree they discover a ladder which leads them to a magical land which 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 (altered to Dame Snap in revised editions), 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. After several more adventures, the people of the Faraway Tree need the children's help when they are invaded by an army of Red Goblins. 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.