Title: Child Whispers
Author: Enid Blyton
Release date: August 14, 2020 [eBook #62928]
Most recently updated: October 4, 2022
Language: English
Credits: Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images
generously made available by The Internet Archive.)
Preface
Rosamunda
Disappointment
On Strike
Fairy Sight
A Fairy Necklace
Paying a Call
Before Breakfast
Goblins
The Fairy’s Bedtime
Poppies
A Queer Butterfly
Lovely Frocks
The Jolly Wind
The Witch’s Balloons
Fairy Music
The Little Folk on the Hill
The Moon at Tea-Time
April
The Silent Pool
This Afternoon
The “Feeling”
The Naughty Gnome
Six o’clock
The Imp’s Mistake
Put to Bed
The Merry Breeze
An Accident
A Happy Ending
The children of nowadays are different in many of their likes and dislikes, from the children of ten years ago. This change of attitude is noticeable as much in the world of children’s poetry as it is in other things.
In my experience of teaching I have found the children delight in two distinct types of verses. These are the humorous type and the imaginative poetical type—but the humour must be from the child’s point of view and not from the “grown-up’s”—a very different thing. And the imagination in the second type of poem must be clear and whimsical, otherwise the appeal fails and the child does not respond.
As I found a lack of suitable poems of the types I wanted, I began to write them myself for the children under my supervision, taking, in many cases, the ideas, humorous or whimsical, of the children themselves, as the theme of the poems. Finding them to be successful, I continued, until the suggestion was made to me that many children, other than those in my own school, might enjoy hearing and learning the poems. Accordingly this collection of verses is put forward in the hope that it will be a source of sincere enjoyment to the little people of the world.
ENID BLYTON.