This is actually a very old Blyton book and I really did not know how old it was until I checked up the publishing date on Wikipedia. It is interesting as the Saucepan man makes an appearance here, though I cannot say whether it is his first appearance or not. I can hardly call myself an expert on Enid Blyton's books, and moreso I cannot say much more about her fairy tale books beyond the books that I have recently read. Maybe Wikipedia will tell me more: nope, nothing more beyond what is written in The Enchanted Wood.
Anyway, this story is about three naughty brownies, Hop, Skip, and Jump, who discover that they have not been invited to the Princess' birthday party simply because they have been naughty. So they pretend to be conjurers, borrow a magic box off of a witch, and sneak into the castle. However, when they perform their magic trick, the princess disappears and the three brownies are kicked out of Fairyland until they find the princess and learn to be good.
This book is about all of the adventures that the brownies go on in their quest to rescue the princess and redeem themselves in the eyes of the king of Fairyland. It is true that they are naughty, or rather mischievous, but they are hardly bad. They are pretty much like three children who all want to have fun, but to still too young to realise the consequences of their actions. The reason I say this, and it comes out of this story, is that they do go out of their way to help people, such as the mermaid and the giggling girl trapped in the land of the clever people.
True, they do do some bad things, like sneaking into the birthday party, and stealing the train, but as I suggested, it is not because of some malicious and evil aspect, but rather because they simply do not think about their actions. Many of the things that they do are simply to attempt to reach their goal of rescuing the princess. However, many of the others that they encounter, such as the wizard in the house without a door, and the giants, are malicious and self-serving, and it is these people that the brownies must protect themselves from.
These three brownies are actually very clever, to the point that they manage to outsmart the people in the land of the Clever People. However, it does come to light that the clever people only think that they are clever, not that they actually are clever. For instance the great wise one gives them a riddle without and answer, believing that unless they give an answer they are not clever. The brownies though turn the tables on the wise man by asking him those questions, and when he cannot answer them, it is discovered that he is not as clever as he makes himself out to be. So, the brownies pretty much blackmail him into letting them go.
This is a lot different to the other fairyland books of Blyton that I have read. In this one (and it is an earlier one), the story has an arch that stretches through the entire story, where as the others that I have read are simply a collection of stories tied together by the characters and the period in which they happened. Even the last Wishing Chair book that I read, despite having earlier events impact the later events, is still a collection of disconnected stories. This one is not, though it is surprising that Blyton ended up writing the otherway instead of sticking to this format. Personally, I think that it is a good thing that she experimented rather than developing a formula and sticking to it. ( )