

In fact special clouds with strange lands on them often arrive to sit at the very top and it's possible to visit them. For anyone who still doesn't know what this is I can tell you that it's an enormous tree which houses many little people of fairy-extraction inside its wide trunk and it reaches a terribly long way up into the sky. Easy Peasie! Jo, Bessie and Fanny are not surprised at all by the unexpected guests and they take them at once to the Enchanted Wood where the mysterious Faraway Tree is situated. This appears to be no problem at all because all that's needed is to find the address of the rose and honeysuckle-clad cottage where Jo and his two sisters reside and then pay a visit. Robin and Joy are reading a book called "The Faraway Tree" and when finished they proceed to do something that we can't - they go and look for Jo, Bessie and Fanny who are the children in the actual story they've just been reading. The bonus is that the reader is inundated with a host of the lovely Dorothy Wheeler pictures and who could complain about that? Robin and Joy initially distance the theme by a factor of one and viewed as a whole it might even be considered as a story within a story. Because of the format the book might not be classed on par with the first three Faraway Tree volumes but that's purely a matter of how you see it. Due to the popularity of the previous Faraway Tree tales it was fairly obvious that Up the Faraway Tree might also be welcomed as a dedicated book and this took place in 1951. It was in picture-strip form and there were four panels per issue. "Once there were two children called Robin and Joy." This is how the fourth of the Faraway Tree series begins in Sunny Stories of July 23rd, 1948.

So off they go and have fun climbing the tree, meeting the people who live there, and visiting magical lands like the Land of Roundabouts and Swings, the Land of Magic, and the Land of Castles as well as having a party in the Land of Cakes! Review by Terry Gustafson Brief Summary by Robert Houghton: Two children, Robin and Joy read a book of exciting stories about Jo, Bessie and Fanny and the wonderful Faraway Tree and determine to go and visit the children from the book and share in their adventures.
