Barbara Stoney: Enid Blyton: The Biography

Due to this years reading challenge I had to read a biography. As I am a huge fan of Enid Blyton and this bio was under offer I took this one. Enid had a pretty normal life until her father moved out, which was at that time some kind of catastrophe. She was not able to tell anyone what had happened, and even her closest friends did not know, that her father did not live at home anymore. This incident left deep marks in young Enid, and explains a lot of things which happened later. The bio covers all of her life, includes a few excerpts and poems and lists her books by publication date.

 

Before I read this bio I had often heard, that Enid was not the best of mothers. This is more or less confirmed by this book. Enid must have been the most wonderful teacher in the world, but as she had hundreds of thousands of children all over the world, her own children seem to get a raw deal. It is a little sad, to think of my favorite childrens book author as a not so good mother, howeever, the story why she was as she was explains a lot!

 

The bio itself seems to be well researched, a lot of information can be acquired. Sometimes I had the feeling, that it was a little mixed up (regarding the chronology), but I think this was my first biography, so perhaps this is quite normal. I award 8 out of 10.

EDIT: It is not my first bio... I read the bio of Margaret Rutherford 2 years ago...

Kathy and Brendan Reichs: Exposure

The fourth installment of the Virals-series starts some time after the events told in "CODE". When the Virals find out, that twin classmates have been abducted, they decide to investigate. But things are not so easy this time: their powers seem to get out of control, so flaring is not a good option. All they can do, is use their brains and find out, what happened.

This Viralsstory differs from the others. Not much flaring, a lot more brainwork, an unusual criminal and a soccerplaying Tory... But it is a good story, keeping the pace of the other books and a cliffhanger which made me think about going straight to an ebookstore to buy the next volume (I have all the books as paperbacks, so I have to wait a while until I can go on reading (8th of October - oh nooooo) - well I did not buy the ebook edition as there are already so many books waiting... but it was really close :-) I award 9 out of 10 for a thrilling story with a little hasty ending.

I already finished the Enid Blyton Biography written by Barbara Stoney and am currently reading "Die See der Abenteuer" by Enid Blyton (for the reading challenge :-)).