My God Enid Blyton was prolific!

oops just noticed this is an old thread..sorry to refresh it!!

I was an avid EB reader & then moved on to Dickens, Shakespeare & just about anything! Now my daughters are hooked on her, but are moving on to meatier things as well. Yes it's old fashioned & yes it's elitist(by our standards today) but it's pure escapism for most kids. FGS they have enough realism in their little lives some of them a bit of anodyne fantasy stuff is balm to their souls. Anyway we adults watch soaps & read lightwieght books for relaxation too as well as the more intellectual stuff so why shouldn't they?

Children are not instinctively bigotted IMHO the absorb these views from the adults around them,sadly!

Well we can agree to differ. I'm not that rabid about the EB is intrinsically bad/evil line, I just think they are junk reading. I read some EB as a kid, but only when I'd run out of better books. I'll strt my guys off on the good stuff - if they want to read EB at school that's fine so long as they don't expect me to too!

Desiderata I agree wholeheartedly. I studied EB as part of my degree last year and was surprised at how many people (theorists etc) took the thought that she was didactic, archaic and well, boring (!)

I think it is the absolute opposite and agree with you that kids should most certainly have that time in life to be polite, drink ginger beer down a secret passage and not worry whether they get lost on the moors. The most unfortunate thing is that kids today can only get those experiences from books (sigh)

Am a fan of EB myself and can't wait for DS to read her stuff too

Totally agree EB told a good story. I think the thing to do is take the best and leave the rest. Otherwise a huge amount of literature would have to be censored, including CS Lewis, Pullman, Ransome, Fine, Shakespeare... the list is endless. Modern stuff is often just as questionable- Horrid Henry is truly horrid but enchants little boys. Philip Pullman shoves his beliefs down your throat in spadefuls and tells a fantastic story.
I loved EB- she felt like a safe place to go.

There might indeed be better things to encourage children to read, but a lot of us enthusiastic readers who loved EB read better things too and it's well documented that many a NON-enthusiastic reader can get suckered into the whole reading business by EB's story-telling gift - 'formulaic and limited' maybe, but as a literary and wide-reading child I never noticed that, the stories were just too darned good I'm a writer myself and would love to have even a fraction of her ability to spin a good yarn that hooks in a reader in a trice.

And no, the golly was not always the bad guy, as fircone says, nor does everyone agree that EB's books are intrinsically racist. See this article

I think those who hate enid blyton have read too much of this

thestaticvoid.net/drivel/201/

dd is enjoying Amelia Jane at the moment. I must admit as I began reading it wondering whether I would have to make some 'cuts' as I went along, but I found that the golly is the leader of the toys and is described as a very kind and sensible toy. And this is an old version of the book I have, not a politically-corrected one.

And about the class thing: I loved Enid Blyton as a child and lapped up stories of nursery teas, houses with secret passages, boarding schools etc. I didn't feel alienated and disenfranchised (so the jargon goes) because these things were out of my financial league.

I'm sorry but I cant bear to read about blytons book in this way!!!
How many hundreds of children's books have some other meaning?? Some underlying classist/sexist/racist themes??
Mary Poppins had fox hunting in it, Watership Down was huge amongst children but obviously written with ulterior messages, do you think the children understood these messages?? No.

I grew up reading Enid Blyton and a world in which 7 children had a club house with a special password and solved crimes, a magical forest with a special tree inhabiting some of the most amazing characters lived and visited wonderful cloud worlds, other children owned a chair that could take you wherever you wanted to go plus tons more.

For an only child with not the greatest of childhoods enid blyton was my salvation.
I am not racist/classist or sexist, because my parents taught me otherwise and some underlying issues the author may have had never manifested themselves in me.

I shall be buying my children every one of her books along with the roald dahl collection and I feel that I am enough to make my children not become terribly prejudiced because of some story tales.

I'm sure that by reading about 'george' my children won't become transexuals, nor gay by reading about noddy getting in to bed with big ears, so why would a black dolly wishing to be pink make them racist???

And what about the sexist and classist aspects? I'm sorry there are just far better books to read, including books from that period (and before) which somehow avoid to be so unpleasant in aspect. And in any case jus because such views might have been bear in mind that she only died in 1968, they really are not any more. Oh, and whilst mass immigration may only have started post WWII black people were not unknown in the UK before then, so the idea that her only experience would come from stories about missionaries is a little disengenious - after all the slave trade started way back in the sixteenth century, and England had large plantations then too. Apparently references to slavery have now been edited out of EB, but they certainly were there originally. However my main point is that she churned out formulatic and very limited stories (about 800 in 40 years!) and there are better things to encourage children to read.

That's it, Oen! I had a terrible childhood. EB was my escape.

I had the freedom the Famous Five had, but I didn't have the confidence. Earlier than that, the Magic Faraway Tree and the Wishing Chair were .... well, they were heaven to a child. Earlier than that, Mr Muddle was fab.

I must admit, I always found Noddy boring, but I think he belong in the 1-3 category, and I wouldn't remember that anyway. My ds still enjoys Noddy.

Agree with the whole of Desiderata's post at 00:33. Loved EB myself as a child - she lifted me away out of a fairly dire childhood into something safe, happy, exciting, comforting, magical. I was eager to share them with my DDs and we all still read them sometimes.

nooka, Enid Blyton wrote within her times. If you don't like the 'racist' bits, then avoid those particular books.

It isn't conducive to an understanding of people in general to make such sweeping statements. Enid Blyton was writing before the Windrush came into town, before mass immigration. Her only experience of black skin would have come from tales of derring-do, when missionaries were 'cooked in cauldrons'.

The golliwogg is a Dutch invention, in the European sense. It is argued that it was 1/ just another rag doll but this time with a black face, and 2/ a racial slur on black people. The Dutch celebrate Christmas with St Nicholas (sp) .. who is our Father Christmas, and Schwarze Pete (sp), a little black-faced boy who was his help-mate. It isn't a big leap of the imagination to create a black, rag doll.

For what it's worth, I had a gollywog when I was a child, and it never crossed my mind that it was the racist personification of evil. It was just another rag doll, like my white rag doll. Equally adorable to me.

The jury is still out, and it always will be.

Enid Blyton wrote dire sexist classist racist crap (IMO!). I've always found a good way to spot poor writers is volume. A good writer puts thought into what they are writing, and that takes time. EB was entirely formulaic, and very much in the Rainbow Fairies/ Babysiters Club category, she just managed to write a whole franchise on her own. There are much much better books out there, both from the EB era (and before) and more modern books. And they are not all gritty realism either!

I was in a book shop last week, and it was story time, a class of school kids age about 7/8 were being read to.
It was Ameila Jane, I have to admit i hung about behind one of the book shelves and listened (bed time reading from my child hood).
Came home and went looking for my Enid Blyton books.

i love her books-i have loads.my granddad used to read them to me now i read them to my dc although i do change some of the words-eg,i dont like 'stupid' so say silly instead etc.also dh finds it hilarious ,as were reading faraway tree again as bedtime story for dc,he thinks the characters dick and fanny are funny!

sleepfinder - never heard of that one, and yes I would find that too much also. I would simply not read it to DD.

In my doctors surgery there is a mural near the kids toyzone, I pointed out to DP that it must have been the faraway tree cos it looked like it had moonfaces slide and washalots house, and that one was probably silkys.

He had no idea what I was talking about.
How awful.

Hulababy, you've not heard of the 3 little black golly wogs who yearn to grow up to be a white prince?

I think thats a little more than terms and phrases...its positively fascist.

I know what you mean, it was just a thought.

Actually i didnt realise until i was doing my googling that she wrote the noddy books.

Golly, yes. She wrote lashings of books.

I think the phrases used that are now considered racists are from a different time. Not that long ago these terms and hrases were deemed as acceptable, not necessarily right but they were. Hence there appearance in such books.

I have just started reading The Wishing Chair to DD. We simply change the name when reading.

DD really enjoyed The Magic Faraway stories.