In Competition No. 2583 you were invited to provide an extract from one of the following chapters which appear in a real work of modern literary criticism: ‘Noddy: Discursive Threads and Intertextuality’; ‘Sexism or Subversion: Querying Gender relations in The Famous Five and Malory Towers’.
I was pulled up by one regular competitor (obviously not a member of the Noddy Club) for setting two challenges, within a relatively short space of time, requiring knowledge of Enid Blyton’s oeuvre. While often panned by adults, Blyton’s books are enormously popular with children. These mock-worthy chapter headings come from an academic volume entitled Enid Blyton and the Mystery of Children’s Literature, by David Rudd, which is a much-admired and surprisingly accessible attempt to analyse this magnetic appeal.
On the whole, your entries were convincing, though you parted ways with the genuine practitioner in your ability to get your point across clearly and in fewer than 150 words.
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