to feel uneasy about my son reading Enid Blyton books

No Balls, have not done so, but thank you for the tip, I am amazoning now to have a look.

Q - have you tried him on shortish stories?e.g. Sally Garner

I take issue with the idea that Othello is inherently racist.

If you are about to argue that it is racist because Othello is black and (essentially) stupid, then how do you account for the fact that King Lear is white and (essentially) stupid? Don't they all have to have a tragic flaw?

That's a good point pretty - I am at my wits end as to how to get DS reading more - progession and engagement - yep sounds okay -
Am glad you mentioned Alan Garner - he was a seriously fabulous writer and really didn't get the recognition he shouldve.

IMO

do you think EB should be censored? or not?

BTW the depictions of Fagin in Oliver Twist and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice had nothing to do with any political stance or social critique. They were simply demonisations of the jewish characters in each case/use of a jewish character as a pantomime villain type character as was common at these times.

And of course Othello is also an inherently racist play if you read it in any detail.

There are many generalisations/assumptions in Enid Blyton that I cannot imagine many of us wanting our dcs to take on, but I would feel uncomfortable cutting them out of the reading list altogether for that reason. I think even quite young children are capable of understanding that an author is a person who has their own views and may project hem into the book.
And re the elf I wouldn't worry at all about a child making a connection between a picture of an elf and any real-life person. It's just us adults who do that.

Message withdrawn

But Q, I think if Enid Blyton was the only thing the child was reading, you'd have a point.

But aren't most people talking about having a range of books/ TV/ other influences, which counter the shite you get in EB books?

Children's biggest influences come from their homes. Unless your home has servants and lashings of ginger beer, your child is really unlikely to be heavily influenced by EB. If all my children watched was Tracey Beaker, I'd be really worried. But I know they have access to masses of other influences much stronger than one TV programme.

I was an avid reader when I was small and absolutely loved Enid Blyton (....and Arthur Ransome and E Nesbit and Alan Garner and LM Montgomery and Elinor M. Brent-Dyer and Frances Hodgson Burnett and CS Lewis and .....).

The racism and classism went totally over my head perhaps/probably because what was/is more important is the home environment in which I lived and the standards that were being passed on to me by my parents.

My parents were passionately anti-racist: we had emigrated from South Africa when I was three to escape apartheid and the plitics of racism. They succeeded in bringing me up so "blind" to race and other cultural/race differences that, for example, I was about 29 before I found out that you could tell that someone was (probably) Jewish by their name or their looks.

My mother was also an (I am told very good) English teacher. Although she disliked Enid Blyton for the quality of her writing, she participated in a TV debate in the early 70s arguing strongly in support of her books because - like JK Rowling today - she encouraged people who wouldn't otherwise pick up a book to do so. And the hope is that having done so, children will then gradutate on to "better" books.

HmmI think they'd have to be reading them on their own wouldn't they?

Surely no-one can bear to read them aloud?

Good point about the ignorance of language Louplet. Remember that row a few years ago when some uninformed loon got furious about use of the word niggardly? S/he thought it had something to do with the N word and it didn't occur to him/ her to look in a dictionary.

Oh Gawd, thought I had comprehensively demolished the argument that 'racist comments are okay because everybody was racist then'

now there is an argument that it wasn't EB who was racist but her illustrator?

well what about the story about some black doll that wanted to be white?

and gollywogs?

Those down to her illustrator too?

What about the class issues?

The issue of dodgy politics is difficult with books. Loads of them were revolting. Even old shakey had his anti-semitic moments.

But surely our position is different with children? I would not want my dcs to read Mein Kampf. I really wouldn't. I might be pleased that they had moved on from the Simpsons and proud of their precociousness but I wouldn't be comfortable that they were old enough to make mature judgements so would prefer texts that were neutral on race/politics/religion.

Louplet, re 8 - The Land of Far Beyond?

Squirrel, JetJets - it's "different from", not "different to" (sorry, teacher's daughter, can't stop myself)
Also, Squirrel, I know heaps of boys who love the adventure of Enid Blyton especially the "Adventure" series.
And finally (drawing breath), I think there is a good ppoint to be taken about whether or not a child is reading these tyoes of books on their own as the opportunity for discussion is more limited. I have never thought about this before and shall duly amend my ways.

Probably coming in way too late here but by way of throwing the light of reason on the whole EB racist elf debate

1. As someone pointed out earlier EB had a bit of a thing for names like winky, binky etc and she was also a bit of a fan of names that described her characters eg Moonface, Mr Saucepan;

2. a chink is a small thing eg a chink of light;

3. an elf is also a small thing, hence chinky is a descriptive name in this context for a small elf;

4. EB did not illustrate this book as far as I am aware;

5. if the illustrator depicted the elf with slitty eyes isn't it possible he/she saw this as a characteristic of elves in general like pointy ears?

6. even if he didn't any racism involved was down to the illustrator and not EB;

7. Ergo EB's use of the name chinky for the elf in this book was not racist and we are simply projecting our own modern sensibilities (and lack of vocabulary re: knowledge of the word chink) onto her;

8. Also, EB didn't just write famous five etc, she also wrote a children's version of the Pilgrim's Progress (can't remember the name of this) which I remember really enjoying as a child. Plenty of morality etc there;

9. In any case, surely children should be encouraged to read as widely as possible to engender their own critical faculties. A diet of pure classics would be just as limiting as a diet of pure EB and I wouldn't think either was healthy. I read everything and anything as a child and enjoyed lots of things for different reasons. In the same way, as an adult I am happy to read the classics but also am happy to indulge in the odd pulp fiction now and again by way of variety (spice of life and all that ).

Phew! Glad I got that off my chest

• nite nite quattro - dont stay up too late!

That's the third time today someone's poked their tongue out at me! Is it a new cool form of greeting? The first was DS this am and the second was a tin man in covent garden.

oh thank god for that[grin ]

its my favourite drink, and you really cant buy decent ginger beer in the shops, only rubbishy ginger ale, which is not the same thing at all.

but.. I guess EB didnt make it sound like duff beer was good for you, child throttling was the norm etc or have a homicidal cat killing mouse

(btw I do let ds watch simpsons sometimes )

[pokey out tongue emocion at quattro]

nite nite

over 500 messages & will not get hooked/reeled in tonight as I neeeeeddd sleep.

yes okay I made myself vulnerable to being accused of being a global arbiter of something or other by insisting that EB was pants. It is a pretty widely held view but never mind about that.

is there a difference between eb and shakespeare? At the risk of sounding like a global arbiter YES there is a difference and YES this has moved beyond the subjective and into the objective. Again this is a pretty widely held view.

someone did once start rewriting shakespeare of course but that was just silly. should EB be rewritten? well don't really believe in that sort of radical intervention but as these are children's books, I don't really see what else one can do? Is it censorship? It probably amounts to it.

I am heartily glad my dc's don't read EB. I kind of wish they would not read all those simpsons books too but no amount of tactful steering was going to keep them apart so I just had to give in.

Nightynight - it's ok, it's just Cockney rhyming slang - ginger beer=queer.

Cockney Rhyming slang I believe.

Sookily enough, I have just read a chapter of St Clares' to my dd, and had a discussion about why somebody said to Casrlotta "That may be what you do in Spain, but in this country we don't slap people" or words to that effect.I really didn't like it -I didn't like that we had to stop the story to talk about the issue (although I would have liked it less if we hadn't discussed it), I would really not be happy with dd reading these books to herself and internalizing the casual racism/class prejudice that occur on every page. I agree that they are engaging stories, but they need so much contextualizing to fit them into the modern world that I'm not sure it's worth the effort

oh god I know I am going to regret asking this - why on earth should references to ginger beer make EB homophobic? It is a drink!

VSS - I remember that William story too - it's brill.

I also like the parody (can't remember who by)

Hush, hush
Nobody cares
Christopher Robin
Has
Fallen
Down
Stairs