to read Enid Blyton with caution?

[catandbabyequalschaos]

DD is only 11 months so this isn't an issue yet.

However, we have been given by a relative some old, beautiful sets of The Wishing Chair and The Faraway Tree, which I remember adoring as a young child.

Fast forward to now and I really have my doubts about them. It isn't just the blatant racism and sexism in them, but the way the children mercilessly bully anyone who isn't like them, the way names are chucked around carelessly and the references to spankings in so many of the books make me really uncomfortable too!

Have any of you not read Enid Blyton with DCs?

[KittyShcherbatskaya]

I can see how you could screen out the racism with some fast improvisation, and explain away the sexism as an attitude of its time - but what do you do with the spanking? "Well darling, back then it was considered perfectly normal for girls to smack each others bottoms with hairbrushes". Hmmm.

On a side note I would be interested to see the Venn diagram of Mumsnetters who don't think they've taken on board any of the sexism in EB/Mumsnetters who do 90% of the childcare and housework.

[KittyShcherbatskaya]

Ah the RubADub one - didn't that have a character with a learning disability who was called "Dummy"?

[jellybeans]

I don't have a problem with EB and would let my kids read them. I loved them as a child. In fact my DD do have some. have a full set of F5 as well.

[Justforlaughs]

Kitty as a avid EB reader as a child I admit that housework is split 90% - 10% in this house - however it is very much DH who does the lions share! As they say, I learned my lessons well!

(have to admit that I had forgotten the character called "Dummy", just remembered Barney and the monkey! )

[nametakenagain]

I really loved the Enid Blyton books, I couldn't get enough. However, some of the messages conflicted with my understanding of the world, which left me confused.

They promote sexism, racism, and snobbery, and I will not be giving them to my dcs. There is no shortage of good books, and they can read EB when they are older if they are so inclined.

[Quangle]

Also I'm not sure how "snobby and privileged" the children in EB are in some ways - they are always being sent away for months to live with stern aunts and uncles (Uncle Quentin!) or parents die and they have to bring up their own siblings (can't quite remember what happens in the Family at Red Roofs but it's something like that).

I devoured all these books as a child and I was aware that this was not my life (I was never allowed to row a rowing boat to camp out on a remote unpopulated island with my cousins or to set up camp behind a waterfall or to engage in hand to hand combat with spies!) but that made it all the more fascinating. The fact that it wasn't the same as my life. And as for the sexism, what I took from the FF was that the girls actually did have freedom and agency and they certainly weren't at home sewing - they were camping behind waterfalls ffs!

I think EB books are absolutely fantastic for developing readers. If you devoured these books as a child you will probably end up a reader - because you accidentally developed reading stamina and involvement in reading while you were racing through trying to find out what happened at Kirrin Cottage. When DD went through the Rainbow Fairies stage, I didn't discourage her at all. It got her from being capable of reading to devouring books and taking ownership of books and thinking of herself as a reader.

[valiumredhead]

I remembered last night that apart from my love of picnics that the only thing I've applied to my adult life is the fact I no longer bite my nails there was a story about a girl with 'horribly bitten nails' and she grew them out one at a time, and that's exactly what I did

[Greensleeves]

I read the wishing chair books to my boys because I loved them as a child

and the faraway tree ones as well

like others, I was a bit shocked at just how offensive they are through a modern lens - I edited out all the racist, sexist and child-beating bits (although IME kids LOVE children being whacked in stories, they think it's hilarious - it's me that thinks it's awful)

the snobbery and appalling social values are still there though

[treas]

Please credit children with having minds of their own that can distinguish between the values you teach them, the environment they live in and a "story" book.

Let them read the flaming books which are basically a jolly good read when you are young. If you have taught them the values that you believe then any thing that they read that is opposed to those values they will question.

Or would you prefer them to read sanitised, boring crap that they don't need to use their brains to question and argue against.

[LadyRabbit]

Interesting one. I'm usually pretty laid back about stuff like this and agree with posters who say that if it's read and contextualised within present day attitudes then it's not the end of the world to read it.

However, and I realise that what I'm about to say comes with my own baggage, BUT as a kid from a mixed race background who was (and never will be) blonde haired, blue eyed, banker daddy, SAHM type, I really aspired to be like certain characters (remember loving Daryl from Malory Towers) and feeling I was always going to come up short. It was exacerbated by the fact that everybody else around me was very much of that background.

I am so happy - and slightly envious - that kids growing up today see so many different kinds of people represents in books and TV. You can't underestimate how important this is. It was only til I read Zadie Smith I felt that I had just as much right to be English as the next person.

Does that make sense or am I being hypersensitive?!

[Quangle]

just out of interest, where is most of the racism? I recall the naughty golliwogs in Noddy (which have now been edited out) but haven't come across it in the ones DD is reading (naughtiest girl, famous five - unless they've been edited too?) except that everyone is clearly white. But then for the time, that's not exceptional and is perfectly realistic for a small, probably Home Counties boarding school etc. It sounds as though there are issues in Faraway Tree and Wishing Chair which DD hasn't read yet and which I don't really remember. Just would like to know so I can do some vetting or make sure to buy new versions.

[LadyRabbit]

My post above is FULL of typos, sorry, I meant to write wasn't and never will be; overestimate instead of underestimate and represented instead of represents.

Mumsnet on a phone just makes me illiterate. Apologies!

[Quangle]

No you are not being oversensitive LadyRabbit. Although I think, as I said in my post, I loved the books because I couldn't identify rather than because I could. I appreciate it may be easier to enjoy not identifying if you are free to identify most of the time (being white). But almost everything about the books was not identifiable to me. It was all slightly weird to me and exotic and in a good way. No one I knew had a life even approaching any of the lives EB depicts - it wasn't like reading Jacqueline Wilson iykwim.

I think what I liked about it also was that the stories are often about children with no adults around (because of the boarding school setting or because of being sent away to frankly negligent relatives!) and so the children had freedom and agency. That in itself is unrecognisable to most children, I think.

[EeTraceyluv]

I recall only one blatantly racist comment in a Famous Five book. Anne and Dick were camping somewhere because Ju and George had gone off to end world war two or something and anne wakes up screaming because she sees a 'horrid dark face' peer in. She sobs to Dick 'he looked like a black man' at which Dick was suitably outraged. I think it was in Five Go Camping, and was my sisters copy - so would have been printed in the late 1950s.

[TheBigJessie]

I haven't re-read them but I can remember the stuff I felt uncomfortable with back then.

The class-ism. (Five Finder-outers and Ern getting above his station with poetry) The way tne French teachers are depicted as not being fluent in English, despite being immersed in English all day for years. The attitude towards Roma.

The working classes are thick and slovenly and incapable of high-minded stuff basically.

The gender roles are not such a problem. There is, for the time, quite a feminist slant. Betsy and Pip in the five find-outers for example. Pip constantly patronises his little sister, but frequently she is the saving force who notices key details. It is clear that he's a twit and that Fatty thinks she's brighter than him.

In modern language he's a mansplainer and he isn't presented well there, either!

[chrome100]

I read and enjoyed Enid Blyton as a child in the 80s and 90s. I knew they were outdated and they didn't stop me growing up to be a leftie guardian reader. I wouldn't worry too much.

[somewherewest]

I think children are brighter than we give them credit for. I read The Famous Five as a child in the 80s and was completely aware of the snobbery and sexism and in no doubt that Timmy the dog was probably the posse's brightest intellect. Amazingly enough I survived . I actually think books like EB's can be useful in helping children think through these issues. Girls for example need to be introduced to the idea that the opportunities they enjoy weren't always there.

[curlew]

"Or would you prefer them to read sanitised, boring crap that they don't need to use their brains to question and argue against."

What, like Hilary Mackay, Michelle Paver, Karen McCombie, Anthony Horovitz, JK Rowling..............

[valiumredhead]

By the time you are one to Anthony Horovitz and JK Rowling though you are a bit too old for EB ime.

I can't really think of any books that filled that gap for when ds was just starting to love proper story books and just before he launched into Harry Potter.

[valiumredhead]

On to

[TheBigJessie]

What age range would you say EB books are for? Trying to think of replacement authors here.

[monicalewinski]

I wanted to be George - I grew up in the 70s/80s and wholeheartedly believed I could be 'just as good as' the boys.

I was, and still am, better than a lot of the boys (and have worked for the last 18 years in a very male dominated job - usually the only female or one of a couple amongst 200+ men).

Enid Blyton made me rail against the stereotype of what I "should" have aspired to tbh. I loved all the boarding school books aswell as the girls were all v independent and not playing second fiddle to boys.

[HesMyLobster]

My DD13 has made her way through all of the Secret 7s, Famous 5's and Wishing Faraway Trees, plus St Clare's and Mallory Towers.
We have had conversations about the differences she's discovered between then and now - it's actually very interesting to hear her points of view.
She hasn't turned into a racist or a homophobe or a snob . . .

... I have overheard the occasional "Gee Willikers!" though

[valiumredhead]

Secret 7, FF etc are for seven to 8 year olds I think.

I was reading Malory Towers at about 8.

Faraway Tree, I read that to ds when he was 5 ish.

[curlew]

"By the time you are one to Anthony Horovitz and JK Rowling though you are a bit too old for EB ime."

Not on mumsnet surely!