My third Noddy Book: Noddy and His Car

Serendipitously, my third Noddy book is actually the third book of the series; Noddy and His Car. (My first Noddy book was #2 and my second was #8.)

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A BARGAIN BUY

As I mentioned in a recent Monday post, I found a paperback of Noddy and His Car in a charity shop in Inverness, Save the Children to be precise, for the princely sum of 25p. I don’t normally buy reprints but at that price I decided to. I think it’s a great bargain when you see it cost 35p when new!

It’s undated, and curiously isn’t listed in the cave of books. I’m not going to make a fool of myself and guess a date for it, I really have no idea when a book would have cost 35p.

Anyway, it’s got the same cover illustration as the hardback and also the full colour endpapers, and it’s fully illustrated inside with the original Beek drawings. As far as I can tell, then, it’s identical to the original hardback except for its format.

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THE STORY

This story picks up not long after the last one finished, though you needn’t have read the previous one as the events are neatly summed up in a short conversation between Noddy and the milkman. He’s not had his little car long at all, and so we join him at the start of him becoming the little man with the red-and-yellow car, as the TV series song goes.

Unfortunately things don’t go very well for Noddy. His passengers have back luck, one loses a tail and another a hat and then the next her bag – and despite it not being Noddy’s fault they demand he pays them sixpence each. This shows the text hasn’t been updated at least as Mrs Tubby Bear explains to Noddy that two sixpences make a whole shilling.

Again it’s Big Ears to the rescue, as despite being a nice little toy, Noddy’s really not very bright. I wonder he’s able to live alone really!

In the end Noddy winds up with six sixpences (three whole shillings) after he finds and returns the items to their owners which is enough to be able to build a little garage for his car.

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CAUTION: MORE GOLLIWOGS AND BED-SHARING!

I spotted a couple of potential controversies in the book, ones I’m sure someone somewhere will have complained about. Firstly, the first naughty toy to have misappropriated one of the lost items is a golliwog and it’s said of him what a BAD golliwog to find someone’s new hat and wear it. The other equally naughty toys are a mouse and a doll, so really I see nothing wrong there but to others it’s probably fodder for the Enid Blyton was a racist campaign.

And secondly, at the end Big Ears says I’ll spend the night with you. Ooh-er. That must be an inappropriate come-on and not an innocent sleepover.

[Much sarcasm and tongue-in-cheekness applies to the last two paragraphs.]

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So yes, another nice little story about the little nodding man who I’m growing rather fond of. I will have to look out for more Noddy books when I’m out book shopping! I have seen a fair few hardback (90s-200os) reprints of late but I believe they’ve been chopped at by the editors and are therefore a waste of a few quid.