The Little Old Toymaker and other stories by Enid Blyton is a collection of fifteen short stories titled The Little Old Toymaker, The Three Lovely Presents,The Cross Little Tadpole, Bottom of the Class!, Impy Plays a Trick, A Tale of Two Boys and a Kitten, It Grew and It Grew, Down the Rabbit-Hole, Sly-One Buys His Apples, The Little Sewing Machine, The Empty Doll's-House, The Pig with a Straight Tail, The Grand Birthday Cake, Clever Old Shaggy and The Enchanted Book.
The Little Old Toymaker is about an old man named Stubby who lived with his wife in a small cottage and made beautiful toy furniture for a living. He enjoyed making toy furniture such as beds for small dolls and tables and chairs for doll’s houses. But there came a time when people stopped buying Stubby’s toys because they thought his toys were old fashioned and they went to big, new shops in the town nearby. Stubby and his wife went through a difficult time and Stubby decided to display his toy furniture on top of the wall outside. But when Stubby went to fetch the furniture after supper that evening, all the furniture had disappeared.
Stubby put more of his toy furniture out on the wall the next morning and decided to keep watch, and was astonished to see the furniture walking off by themselves and he found that small, invisible pixies who did not know that the furniture belonged to him were carrying it off to show the Fairy Queen who lived in the woods nearby.
The Fairy Queen had recently built a new country house and she was looking for beautiful furniture for her new home. The Fairy Queen is very pleased with Stubby’s beautiful furniture and offers him a permanent job as furniture maker of Fairyland where Stubby and his wife have a happy life together.
Reviewed by Hannah William