The Naughtiest Girl In the School series has a major plot hole

[TheKrakening3]

This bothered me as a child and is bothering me again now I am reading the series to my kids.

The school money box just wouldn’t work, would it? Parents wouldn’t send their kids back to school with pounds and pounds of holiday money, knowing it was going to be put in a school box and redistributed evenly to all kids. Parents would either-

1. Send their kids with no money, but heaps of stamp sheets and sweets;
2. Send their kids with a small bit of money in keeping with the ethos of the school but not send pounds and pounds for birthdays etc in the school term as it would disappear into the box;
3. Send their kids with nothing, knowing their kids would be getting weekly money from the box.

The whole system would collapse in days.

Yes I'm interested too,I understand they would remove things that people might find offensive these days ,but Enid Blyton wrote her books in the 30,s and 40,s it was a different time .

It seems to vary quite a bit depending on the publisher. Some EB have had a lot of tweaking, some necessary, some pointless. Money should be left as it is because kids aren’t stupid, they could put in an explanation about old money if they like. And once you start you have to keep changing it to keep up with inflation.

But I’ve seen another EB book republished recently, The Caravan Family, which was still awash with gay caravans so it probably hadn’t been changed much, if at all.

I think the money update also happened to the Jill's Pony books - I'm sure I had some of those with decimal currency and some with pre-decimal.

They don’t shift the whole story to the present day just tinker with bits here and there.

Yes, quite a few children's books have been converted from shillings to decimal pence in more recent editions. I find it annoying - something like a book costing 20p is probably less understandable than it costing 4 shillings. We coped with other books where they spent cents and dollars, or euros or various pre-euro European currencies. Children who can read chapter books aren't so stupid they can't get their head round different currencies. In fact these days, it's probably just as odd that they spend cash, rather than using a card or smartphone - and how many stories would have resolved quite differently if someone could have just whipped a phone out of their pocket to take a photo, or call a parent/teacher/the emergency services? The world changes, and part of the joy of reading is you experience things in books that you can't experience in real life, whether because of time, geography, finances, technology, etc.

I have read at least one children's series which explained in a preface that there were 12d in a shilling, and 20s in £1. Might have been a Girls Gone By edition. So it is possible.

I find it annoying - something like a book costing 20p is probably less understandable than it costing 4 shillings.

Yes, I agree with this. Leaving books in 'old money' removes the need to keep updating them to be consistent with inflation.

Shockingly, I have some children's books published in the 1970s which have been updated to decimal currency, but casual use of the N word has been left in.

It was boarding school books that inspired me to ask my Dad to explain old money... Then in turn shock my Physics teacher as I could calculate in base 12 etc due to a game I played with my Dad. He was trying to illustrate how easy we had it and hadn't expected one of his modern school girl (2001) to know the system.

I was born just after decimilisation so in my youth there were still lots of shilling and 2 shilling coins in circulation. My husband was about 12 on "D-Day" and says everyone adjusted really quickly, which surprised me.

I went to a boarding school in the 1980s where we had to queue up for pocket money. Istr we weren’t allowed more than ten pounds a term or something.

They might have done back then to be fair. People are more selfish these days.