If anyone actually pays attention to my profile, they wil notice that the above book by Enid Blyton is my favourite book ever. This is because it started my reading independently which led onto "To Kill A Mocking Bird" "Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice" and what not

Anyway, I have been wanting to buy a copy of this for ages as Bored Jr has been reading the Secret Seven books and I thought it would be great for him to read MGC (and I secretly wanted to re-read it)

Finally I was alerted to the possibility of buying "The Circus Trilogy" plus two other books in a collection for £20 from Amazon. I ordered them.

Now the reason I have had to wait so long is that "Mr Galliano's Circus" and the whole of the trilogy has been out of print for years.

Considering when it was written and the subject matter, I assumed this was possibly because there was possibly stereotyping of, maybe, gypsies or funfair folk as thieves or something.

I skim-read the book to make sure and, within three pages, was being introduced to one of characters' dogs who were called "Darky" and "Nigger"

I am wondering how I am going to get around this when I read it to Bored Jr.

I suppose "Darky" might be Ok if he is a dark-coloured dog but I can't go anywhere with the other

I don't know if I can even use the Huckleberry Finn argument here (another book I want to get for Marley)