Enid Blyton - what's been edited out/changed??

PC gone mad again.

Yes! I liked those too. Far from being a character to be mocked and looked down on, Fatty was the admired leader of the secret seven and very clever. I often think of how he was locked in a room by the baddies but was able to get out with the aid of a piece of newspaper and a piece of wire (or was it bent hairgrip?). We tried that at home and it works as long as the baddy has been silly enough to leave the key in the lock the other side.

Have you looked to see what the original was? I wonder if it was a reference to something that wouldn’t make sense to children now, like she’d forgotten her Liberty bodice or not pulled her stockings up something of that ilk. Again, really interesting for a child learn about if it’s not familiar!

I learned so much from reading original versions of all kinds of children’s literature (and adults).

Dr Doolittle is pretty iffy in parts too, I suspect

I’m glad you brought this up. I think of his name every now and again and shudder.

The only things I remember about Enid Blyton books were about lemonade and picnics and sandwiches. About nasty bullying girls at school who got their comeuppance. Gymkhanas and things like that.

My mum ditched all mine! Without my knowledge. I’ve got a photo of me at 9 inside a camper van in France reading an Enid Blyton book.

They wouldn’t like Little Black Sambo goes Fox Hunting. As seen in a National trust property a while ago.

I saw an article today saying that Janet and John books have been given a label warning too at a museum in Birmingham.

I wonder what we read in books today that will be banned in the next generations view as being very unsuitable.

I’ve still got the originals, from when I was a child, and they have been read by my kids, grandkids, and currently waiting for my GGD to read. 😊

At the same time, it helps to know some history. For all the Islamaphobia (for example) why was Elizabethan England busy (trying to) making alliances with the Ottomans and why was there a mosque in 16th century London ?

I agree with this too, it’s Debatable that the child using the slur would also be harmed by getting into serious trouble for innocently using a word they read in a library book

I think this was the Dam Busters (and that’s what the dog was called in real life 😮)

😱

Also, is the thinking behind these fripperies that as long as we get rid of nasty names. the behaviour behind them also disappears ?

It's a little unclear what exactly is being glossed over here.

I agree. Rewriting history with respect to inclusion for women, disabled people, PoC, gay people etc risks minimising the very real struggles people had.

I saw a supposedly historical drama (cannot think of the name, it was about malicious letters) set in the early 20th century featuring a black judge. It minimises the exclusion black people faced to suggest this was a run of the mill occurrence when in reality there were no black judges at that time.

(Best to ditch the N word though, I wouldn't want kids repeating it and not understanding the level of offence and hurt they'd cause).

To be fair, I don’t personally have any great strength of view against keeping things like the names and currency as they were originally. Perhaps they do add something. But I broadly suspect that the publishers realised that sales of the books were declining in recent decades and that that was because whilst the average adult MN woman might think the historical details make the books magical, a lot of children found them old-fashioned and were reluctant to read them and therefore increase sales, and that those decisions didn’t run much deeper than that.

Our neighbours regularly tell me, while with DD, that we're so LUCKY to have a man like DH who works so hard to allow us to live here and have the life we do.

I work from home and, while currently part time, full time I'd earn more than him. It's everywhere still, the casual sexism. I have regularly told DD that mummy works too, she can work doing whatever she wants, all that.

She has the updated versions at the moment but I fully intend to let her have the originals when she can understand the fact it's what is was like then, and things are better now except for people like the old men that live either side of us.

I agree with this. By the time they’re reading Enid Blyton, most children will be reading them alone, and they don’t always make it obvious that some of the attitudes are not ok. There’s also quite a lot of fat-shaming and appearance-shaming, and quite often the unpleasant children are described as spotty - I’d rather my kids didn’t absorb that kind of thinking.

It annoys me when things are modernised in books. I liked reading how children behaved and their lives in ‘the ‘olden days’ especially upper class children who had maids and so on.

I contemplated that for my 4 year old who wanted the Faraway Tree (my favourite as kid) but she will absolutely know I've done that when she reads them for herself. And DH will likely change different bits or the same bits to different things.

That's the main reason I went for the updated ones over the originals, which I still have. I figure I can give her the originals when she's older and explain why they're different.

there was an N word dog in The Children of Kidillin but not in famous 5. The well known dog called N word was Guy Gibson's dog in the film the Dambusters.

I think he was always called Timmy/Timothy, are you perhaps thinking of the dog in the DamBusters film, who was a black labrador with a racial slur as its name?

Timmy was called Timothy but Timmy is just a short version

👀👀🧐What the what now?

Which would perhaps help society.

Perhaps they should upgrade it to being threatened with a knife and then being allowed to carry on regardless until someone is stabbed.

Let's be honest, we might say things a bit nicer but actually there's some real savagery out there.