Happy Birthday Blyton, And Merci Book Coup

Birthdays call for commemoration, and on this week, leading up to August 11, we’re celebrating the genius behind the book, that is our namesake – beloved author of children’s books (that every eighties kid still has stashed away in some secret corner of her bookshelf), conjurer of extraordinary worlds, a wizard with words, visionary and dreamer, the brilliant and late Enid Blyton.

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Once Upon A Time…

…in a land far far away, before  there was Hogwarts, there was The Magic Faraway Tree , The Enchanted Wood , The Island Of Adventure and our own personal favourite, The Wishing Chair.

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In a career spanning forty years, with over 800 books for children to her name, all selling more than a whopping 600 million copies worldwide, it’s hardly a surprise that Blyton is a household name with fans world over, who still read and collect her !

Spell Bound

And why should that not be? With their magical dreamscapes that transport the reader instantly into a world of nostalgia, with their ability to elevate even the most ordinary experiences into the extraordinary, with their absolute embrace of the simplest pleasures in life – these books are what turned us into geeky little bibliophiles in the making.

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There were backyard gardens (with hidey holes, gnomes, fairies and secret trails), cakes and cookies (that Twinky the elf baked especially for you), toy trunks, doll houses and beloved stuffed animals (that came to life by night – Watterson’s Hobbes ain’t the only cool cat around),sleepovers (that were the doing and the undoing, of The Naughtiest Girl, which of course, we obsessively passed along, dog-earing our copies the whole while, in the back benches of dull chemistry classrooms), and long sleepy summers (that suddenly came alive when unexpected adventures found packs of friends and cousins who would go on to become notorious as The Famous Five and The Secret Seven).

Child’s Play

As it turns out, our brand - The Wishing Chair was born out of a deep desire to recapture this very childhood. With a strong creative and feminine aesthetic, the Wishing Chair seeks to make connections at a personal level and impart a sense of wonder and happy nostalgia.

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As for naming it after our favourite Blyton book, that bit was as instinctive as it was elementary. We wanted The Wishing Chair to have the same transportive nature of the magical chair in the book: where the fantasy world of our favourite childhood stories came to life, where wistfulness could take pride of place, where longing for a simpler time could be the norm.

Reading (G)lasses

Speaking of, The Wishing Chair (@Wishing_Chair) and Puffin Books (@PuffinIndia) are celebrating Enid Blyton’s birthday this year on twitter with a really fun contest asking you to describe your favourite “dreamland” – It can be all, anything and everything you want it to be. The most innovative and fun answers stand to win books – because what better way to celebrate a beloved writer than by reading her?

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What are you waiting for? Follow our handles, and the hashtags #HBDBlyton and #LandsOfBlyton, send us your quirkiest best, RT to spread the word and get lucky. We welcome all your grinning selfies boast