The Donkey on the Sands and other stories by Enid Blyton is a collection of seventeen short stories titled The Donkey on the Sands, The Very Strange Secret,A Little Bit of Magic, The Very-Full Stocking, The Enchanted Goat, Bonzo Gets Into Trouble, Goblin Magic, The House Made of Cards, Little Marya and the Witch, Spiny's Good Turn, The Beautiful Toy Duck, Mister Wiggle's Scissors,Sally Suck-a-Thumb, The Ball That Vanished, The Bunny on the Birthday Cake,Ben's Forgettery and The Magic Seaweed.
A Little Bit of Magic begins with a description of a little girl named Fanny reading a book of fairytales. Fanny is intrigued by the magic in fairyland and the interesting lives of the fairies, pixies and elves. Fanny wishes that she could see magic in real life after reading the book. She finds something in her garden which seems something like magic in the way a caterpillar turns into a butterfly.
The Magic Seaweed is about a girl named Jill who builds a sandcastle by the sea. After Jill finishes building the castle, she waits for the tide to come in to fill the moat that she made around the castle. While she waits, Jill picks the seaweed in the sand and finds an odd little seaweed with a sweet inside. Jill eats the sweet and to her astonishment finds that she has grown small and has become the size of a fairy. She is able to go inside the sand castle she built and explore its rooms and passages. She meets a kind crab who thinks that she is a pixie and makes friends with him.
The Very Strange Secret is about a nasty goblin who harasses the fairies in his village. The fairies want to tell spiteful gnome to leave but they know that he will not go and they devise a plan to get rid of him. The fairies know that the gnome has a dirty curiosity about things which are none of his business and they turn the tables on him and send him away to the moon which is a terrible place and from where he can never return.
Reviewed by Hannah William