Enid Blyton's Brer Rabbit Book - Enid Blyton

Published by Dean and Son Ltd: London, 1963.

I needed a book with an animal protagonist, and remembered this book I read a few times as a child. After rereading it, I'm not super convinced that Brer Rabbit is a protagonist in the traditional sense - more of an anti-hero or even an antagonist at times - but the book still fits the brief over all.

This is a collection of short fable-like chapters, each starring a somewhat anthropomorphised animal (usually Brer Rabbit) and usually having some sort of conflict where the smarter creature defeats the dumber creature. It is not always clear how anthropomorphised these animals are; they live in houses, they smoke cigars, all of them eat both meat and greens, and the male animals seem to be quite keen on 'Miss Meadows and the girls' (who might be human??) and yet the "carnivores" are often trying to eat the "herbivores", and at times they live in their traditional locations, such as ponds or briar-patches. Each story bends the rules in order to fit the story they want to tell.

There are occasional connections between the tales, usually some sort of reference being made to a prior story, but it seems as though this book was grouped together from a bunch of separately published stories, and they are not always put in the correct order. So, sometimes a chapter will open with a reference to something that one character has done to another, only for a later chapter to tell us that story.

The Brer Rabbit stories were originally African-American tales, and were collected by a number of different authors. Enid Blyton keeps a little bit of the vernacular of the original tales, but does write in a more 'English' manner overall. I'm not sure whether a book written by this ethnicity of author on this topic would be published today.

I don't have a lot more to say on this one. Some of the stories are fun, some are a bit mean. They're all fairly straightforward, and kinda odd.

The most famous, retelling the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby, is possibly the most fun. Partially because it is an example of Brer Rabbit getting tricked (at least to begin with).

Completed 11 August 2025.



(2025 Reading Challenge - "Animal Protagonist")

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