Book Review – Wishing Chair Series
Reading is one of the most wonderful and useful habits that you can help your children develop, and introducing them to the right books can make it so much easier to develop the habit of reading.
Also Read: “Developing the Habit of Reading in Children”
In today’s times, when all of us are advised to stay indoors, reading can be a wonderful gift to constructively engage the children. The Wishing Chair series are also available as e-books on Kindle, so you can get them for your children without worrying about going to a bookstore or about physical delivery of the books.
The Wishing Chair Series
Author: Enid Blyton
Enid Mary Blyton, born in London, was and still is one of the most widely read children’s author. She was a prolific writer and wrote over 600 books in her approximately 40 year writing career. The Wishing Chair Series is one of the popular stories.
Age Range
Read Aloud: 3-5 years
Self reading: 5-9 years
Review
The Wishing Chair series, like many other Enid Blyton books, transport the reader into a magical world.
Peter and Mollie accidentally find the Wishing Chair when they go to an antiques shop to buy a present for their mother. To their astonishment, the chair on which they sat, could grow wings and fly! That is the start of their many adventures.
The chair takes them to the giant’s castle where they rescue Chinky/ (name changed to Binky in later editions) who is a Pixie. Pixies are mythical creatures, mischievous, child-like and fond of having fun. Binky starts living with them in their playhouse and the 3 of them start their adventures. They go to many magical places on the wishing chair, meet giants, wizards, pixies, visit the Land of Dreams, a disappearing island!
The 3 books in the series are (the links below also have option of e-books):
The book length is approximately 150-180 pages. It is divided into chapters each of which is about 4-5 pages. In the 1st book in the series “Adventures of the Wishing Chair”, most chapters are stories unto themselves and are therefore easy to read for most children who are graduating from picture books to regular books. Towards the end of the book, each story is broken into 2-3 chapters. The other 2 books have some stories which are slightly longer (5-6 chapters long). The books gradually increase the capacity of a child to read longer stories and is a perfect bridge from picture books to full novellas.
Benefits
These books open a new world of fantasy to a child, a magical world where anything is possible. It opens up their young minds to a world of endless possibilities, it expands their thinking, it increases their creativity. Try playing the ‘Spiralling Stories’ game (a storytelling game that builds creativity and is a lot of fun) with your children before and after they read these stories and you will see the difference in the number of scenarios they can think of after reading these stories.
The other advantage is improving vocabulary of young children. The books are written in a simple, easy to understand language but in the end, the children would have learnt at least a few new words and their usage.
These are must read books for young children. They are fun, entertaining and will definitely contribute to their love of reading!
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The Intelligent Parent 
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