The Smickle Smockle and other stories by Enid Blyton is a collection of eighteen short stories titled The Smickle Smockle, The Buttercup Spell, Ladybird, Fly Away Home, Fiddle-De-Dee's Spell, The One-Eyed Rabbit, The Magic Scissors, An Exciting Afternoon, Scallywag's Mistake, Sooty Noses, The Lost Ring, Away Went the Panda!, Blackberry Magic, The Rabbit That Lost Its Squeak, When Mollie Missed the Bus, Where's Your Drum, Bom?, Away Goes His Head!, Hoo Wong, the Wonderful Conjuror and The Extraordinary Christmas Tree.
The Smickle Smockle begins with a girl named Anna receiving a box of Plasticine for her birthday. She makes objects with the Plasticine in the playroom in front of her toys who watch with great interest. The toy monkey gets an idea that he could make something marvellous with the Plasticine. That night, after Anna goes to sleep, the toys come alive and the monkey who is very naughty takes the Plasticine out of the toy box and thinks about what he could make with it.
The toys gather around the monkey to see what he is doing, and the pink rabbit asks him to make something that all the toys could play with. Now the pink rabbit was very timid and the monkey was fond of teasing him. The monkey tells the rabbit that he’ll make a tiger that will chase him and the rabbit gets very scared and thinks of running away and never coming back.
The monkey finally decides to make a very peculiar animal which he calls Smickle Smockle and the rabbit is terrified because the monkey tells him that the Smickle Smockle likes to eat rabbits. The teddy bear is very annoyed with the monkey for frightening the rabbit and he tells him to put away the Plasticine at once, and the monkey is punished for his naughty behaviour.
Reviewed by Hannah William