“I can’t understand how Enid Blyton can write all day and leave out everything about real life,” writes a disenchanted 12-year-old fan in June 1958. The writer scoffs at Blyton’s habit in her autobiography of “forever doling out advice to would-be writers” and states: “When I write, it will be for adults, NOT for children.” Children’s laureate Jacqueline Wilson treated last weekend’s Federation of Children’s Book Groups conference in Birmingham to glimpses of her schoolgirl self, her plans to write her autobiography for her older child fans having sent her back to her diaries (“Thank goodness I kept them all. I do sound rather Adrian-Mole-ish, don’t I?”).