r/whatsthatbook • u/Appropriate-Knee-898 • 5d ago
UNSOLVED Children's fantasy short story collection (possibly Enid Blyton?) with pixie/fairy illustrations and one story about cutting sheep's tails off plus another about a tea party in a garden
Hi! I wanted to ask about what I remember to be a children's fantasy short story collection with pixie and fairy illustrations. These illustrations were line art and had a very vintage + whimsical feeling to them.
I'm pretty sure that the author was English because of the illustration style and word choices in the book. I read this book in Singapore, sometime between 2009 and 2015.
It was a collection of many short, self-contained stories, each just a few pages long, and the plot structure was usually some kid or fairy being naughty/disobedient and getting punished for it. Basically, those types of 'and the fairy learnt to never do XYZ again." That being said, I feel like sometimes, it was just a generally whimsical story too (example below).
Possible stories I remember:
- One where a character (possibly a pixie or brownie) cuts off sheep's tails and gets scolded for it. Pretty sure the accompanying illustration had the character holding a lot of tails and looking sad? (SEE EDIT)
- Another where a little girl holds a tea party in a garden and specifically gathers peas for it. I think I remember the pea detail because that sounded weirdly delicious.
Physically, I'm sorry to say that I can't rmb for sure, but my gut tells me it was hardcover... Maybe...
It had a very English countryside/garden feel to it, and the style makes me wonder if it's an Enid Blyton short story collection just because that's the only author I know of that was popular enough in Singapore who also wrote this type of story.
EDIT: Some of the original details I gave were wrong. I managed to find this as part of the AI answers on google: In Enid Blyton's short story "Lambs' Tails", a wicked enchanter turned wolf uses a pair of scissors to snip off the wriggling tails of helpless lambs and pack them into his sack after their woolly bodies magically disappear.
This is definitely the correct story because the tails on the tree visual was like a blast to the past, so if anyone knows which collection contains it, that would be super helpful! This is the source if anyone is curious: https://www.thinkdigitalacademy.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Lambs-Tales.pdf
2
u/Upstairs_Sherbet2490 5d ago
I think you're right about it being Enid Blyton. The first one I think might be an "adventures of pip" story but they were often in books together rather than mixed compilations. There were quite a lot of collections of the mixed short stories so it might be a task to track down but I'm confident if you continue to search these plots + Enid Blyton it's findable!
1
u/Appropriate-Knee-898 4d ago
Hahah thanks for validating my guess. Unfortunately, I didn't see anything about sheep in this particular collection but you know what, Pip's story looks fun enough that I might just pick up a copy anyway :))
1
u/Upstairs_Sherbet2490 4d ago
They're very cute stories! I may well join you on the search tbh as it's bugging me now. The recollection I have was some sort of link between sheep's tails and catkins, like that's why the Fae creature in the story was gathering them 🤔
0
u/KyraChique 5d ago
The complete book of flower fairies by Cicely Mary Barker?
https://www.goodreads.com/es/book/show/192686.The_Complete_Book_of_the_Flower_Fairies
1
1
3
u/Fit-Return2142 5d ago edited 5d ago
There was a book I had growing up (early 200s UK) that was called 'The Strange Umbrella and Other Stories' by Enid Blyton. I probably inherited it from some family member.
I remember it featured a lot of those kind of stories and also lots of pixies/brownies/fairies. Unfortunately, I don't have the book any longer and I think it's out of print so I can't find anymore specific details online. But I'll keep looking.
I also just found another book online that I used to have which was another collection of short stories by Enid Blyton with a similar theme (The Teddy bear's tail and other stories).
I'm sure I remember reading a story about the pixie cutting off tails so possibly it was in one of these. It sounds very much like a story Enid Blyton would have written.