The Seaside Family by Enid Blyton

The Seaside Family by Enid Blyton
Buy The Seaside Family by Enid Blyton at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Emerging Readers
Reviewer: Zoe Morris
Summary: The latest adventure of the family from the caravans, and they're off to the seaside for the summer. Charming and timeless.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 112	Date: June 2017
Publisher: Egmont
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 978-1405286732
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The Caravan Family (Mummy, Daddy, Mike, Belinda and Ann) are all ready for the holidays, and what better place to spend time together than at the seaside? They can play in the sea, picnic on the sand and generally enjoy each other's company. It will be marvellous.

If you've not met the Caravan Family before, well then you're a little late to the party because this book is part of a series about them. They got the name because they live not in a house but in 2 caravans, one for the parents and one for the children. They are bright homes (all yellows, reds and blues) with lots of conveniences like running water and cooking stoves. And best of all they are so portable, so when the family want to go to the seaside they just strap on Davey and Clopper, their two horses, and trundle off.

This is a chapter book (12 chapters in under 100 pages) that is perfect for young readers, either alone or together snuggled up as a bed time story. I remember them well from my youth and these new editions keep the same phraseology (so lots of things are still gay) but add new illustrations. So you might be left with some questions about why they have to pore over a paper map rather than just asking the Sat Nav, and why it takes days to get somewhere that's only a little way down the road, but generally speaking the stories are timeless. After all, more than 65 years after it was first published, families still take trips to the seaside, play with blow up balls on the beach and get special food for tea because it's a holiday.

In this story, the children are joined by Benjy. He's the son of one of father's friends, and the children find him a bit of a wuss, but there are lessons to learn about being kind, understanding why people behavethe way they do, and encouraging little boys with dreadfully ill mothers to come out of their shells. It has a bit more meat to it than the story of the first book in the series (the helpfully named and also re-released The Caravan Family) but both books are lovely in their own way.

Enid Blyton wrote a lot of wonderful books, and even if you remember her works this small mini series may have passed you by. But whether or not you were already familiar with it, we would highly recommend these new editions for your primary schoolers. The colourful paperbacks are much more child friendly than the heavy hardbacks I had in the 80s, and the stories are just wonderful and whimsical.

Thanks go to the publishers for sending us this one to review. For more seaside themed frolics for this sort of age group we would recommend Seaside Adventure (The Secret Mermaid) by Sue Mongredien or A Seaside Adventure (Tumtum and Nutmeg) by Emily Bearn. We can recommend Shipwrecked (The Adventures of Titch and Mitch) by Garth Edwards, although we thought the text lacked a little sparkle.

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You can read more book reviews or buy The Seaside Family by Enid Blyton at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy The Seaside Family by Enid Blyton at Amazon.com.

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