Enid Blyton - ridiculous

[JumpRope]

Dick and Fannie from The Magic Faraway Tree have been renamed Rick and Frannie.

I'm a bit pissed off. How ridiculous!

[bodygoingsouth]

Ledaire yes Mr pink whistle was an invisible man who loved and befriended children. he sat on park benches and watched them play and then often took their hands and walked off with them..

I have her series with golly, woggy and n....r, sorry silly to do that really but can't bring myself to write the word.

my dd took some in for GCSE sociology discussion.

off topic she also took in Mandy annual 1976 and in it were jobs for 'girls' they were alphabetical and 'Y' was young wife!!! hilarious.

[piratecat]

i bought dd the original st Claires books and she thinks they are hilarious.
she often likes to say
'my lacross wants mending'

[piratecat]

lacross stick i meant

[ScarlettMantleplume]

I know they were remaking The Dambusters a year or two back. Did they change the name of the dog in the end?

[WallyBantersJunkBox]

Mr Pink Whistle.... I never put it all together....

I bought "Are you there god, it's me Margaret?" on holiday last year, I read it when I was 8 and remember being fascinated by the trip to buy a sanitary belt in a choice of pastel colours and looped towels.

Felt quite flat and deflated to find they had unceremoniously updated it to a modern pack of stick on pads....

[Crowler]

"are you there god, it's me margaret" - what an excellent book. I'm going to leave it in the past though, I think a re-read may leave me likewise deflated.

[manicinsomniac]

What's funny about needing to mend a lacrosse stick
Have I missed an innuendo or something

Slight wilful misinterpretation of Mr Pinkwhistle I think!

[piratecat]

not an innuendo just a sentence most girls aren't going to have to say.

[TamerB]

That is the joy of books, tattybogle, children enjoy being subversive- part of Roald Dahl's appeal. Of course you know that if your mother is going to roll her eyes at Rainbow Fairies it is going to make them more enjoyable!

People persist in thinking children have no minds of their own and can't be discerning and critical on their own- mother has to cross the t's and dot the i's for them because they are just empty vessels!
When I was young I read through all my aunt's set of school stories set in 1920s/1930s and they were incredibly dated and hilarious because of it. I still enjoyed the stories.
I agree with manicinsomniac, they are not today's attitudes and it is quite jaw droppingly terrible by today's thinking, but nothing wrong is seeing attitudes from the past. That is why I don't think they should change the names, they are from a set period in history.
I think that my son's attitude was healthy. If I started prosing on about a book he would just look at me in amazement and cut me off with , 'it's just a story mum, you don't have to take it seriously'!

I also think that it is sad that adults look at children's books through an adult perspective. Librarians banned Enid Blyton for a long time and she survived. She survived because she wrote a good story for a child, which gets me back to my original point that if you ban a book, or treat them with the distain curlew showed, they become instantly desirable!

It surprises me on here that parents think they will ban their child from reading a book and the child will say 'yes mummy' and obey. I would have said 'yes mummy' and borrowed a copy to read in secret and find out what the fuss was about!

[TamerB]

I also didn't like the same books as my mother, we don't like the same books now. We both read a lot, I am over 60, she is over 90 and she comes to my house and can't find anything to read! She is a huge Jeffrey Archer fan. I don't tell her what I think. Reading is a personal thing- it is when a child, and not something to impose on others. Suggestion is fine- but nothing more.

[frugalfuzzpig]

I've not banned any books. The only issue I guess will be if she picks up something that is too old like in the teen library (in ours, the books are divided into 'teen' for 11-14ish and 'teen plus' for older teens if there's more sex or drugs adult content)

DD always picks up rainbow fairies and similar from the school library, and is always very excited about them, but she's never actually enjoyed any enough to finish one. Whereas stuff like Dahl and Blyton have her totally hooked.

[curlew]

"It surprises me on here that parents think they will ban their child from reading a book and the child will say 'yes mummy' and obey"
Has anyone actually said that?

[Crowler]

I had no idea Enid Blyton was controversial.

For those who do object to her books, why?

[Crowler]

What is the problem with mending a lacrosse stick? That one has me really confused.

[Pigeonhouse]

DH and I are wordperfect in large chunks of EB from our own childhoods (he had older sisters, and a rather dubious crush on Darrell Rivers from Malory Towers at a tender age!) and still have lots of old editions lying around the house.

I'm not sure large numbers of today's children are likely to enjoy EB - while I read them with nostalgia and enjoyment (and utter horror at the racist, classist, sexist, xenophobic stereotyping, though I will acknowledge that that was always clear to me as a child, too), it's her inability to write character that strikes me now. Her plots require her to keep putting sets of four children plus pet/pets into adventurous situations, but Julian, Anne, Dick and George (Famous Five) are pretty much indistinguishable from Philip, Lucy-Ann, Dinah and Jack (the 'Adventure' books), or Andy, Tom and the twins (can't remember the titles -the ones where they get marooned on an island in a storm and catch Nazi submarines), or Jack, Mike, Peggy and Nora (the 'Secret' books). The Secret Seven are completely indistinguishable from one another, apart from the naughty cousin Susie, and Jo, Bessie and Fanny in the Faraway Tree books ditto. The O'Sullivan twins are the same girl, as far as I can see.

I can barely remember who the other Find-Outers were apart from Fatty, dopey little Bets, and the comic relief working-class sidekick Ern!

(Though on the 'Fatty' issue, perhaps interesting to have the group effortlessly dominated by the fat child, who is clever, quick-thinking and a natural leader...? I mean, it sort of mitigates a cruel nickname...?)

[Pigeonhouse]

Crowler, I believe she was objected to during her lifetime by parents/teachers/librarians who felt primarily that her books were trite, anaemic, badly-written and formulaic.

Now she's objected to for her (undeniable) sexism, racism, classism and xenophobia as well as all the other stuff.

[SomethingkindaOod]

I grew up on Enid Blyton, Chalet School, Malory Towers and 1920's schoolgirl stories and loved them! My DD has the St Claire's box set and apart from the 3 new stories they don't seem to have changed. She's half way through the second book and is totally hooked. I don't predict she's going to change from a 21st century girl into a prissy sexist, racist fool anytime soon.equally DS for some reason is ploughing through a book by Winston Churchill. I'm pretty certain he isn't going to turn into landed gentry or first lord of the Admiralty!
They're pretty outdated and some of the attitudes make me go but they're just stories.
I'll carry on letting them read what they want as long as it's age appropriate. I do wish the publishers wouldn't mess around with old stories though.

[Crowler]

I wasn't raised on EB but I have read a few to my 8 year old in the past year. I just read The Fantastic Four - I would struggle to find something offensive in there. Trite, maybe - but my son is 8, he enjoys trite I suspect!

I also have read a couple of the Magical Faraway Tree and again.... I'm struggling to find anything offensive.

[PirateJelly]

Loving this thread it has really taken me back.

Does anyone remember the Naughtiest girl series with Elizabeth? I loved those books so much, might have to see if I can find a copy

[Oneglassandpuzzled]

I love the left's immediate desire to 'pulp' anything they don't approve of.

In our family we discuss books. If there's something racist in an EB book we talk about why that might have been, and the historical and sociological reasons for it.

I tend to think that's a better approach than banning books. Or anachronisitic criticism.

[brooncoo]

Pigeonhouse - I'm reading the first "Find Outer' book now with my 8 yr old. Read them all as a child and seemed to remember Fatty being the natural leader but at the moment he is the outsider which made me wonder if my memory was playing tricks on me.

The other boys are actually being quite mean to poor Fatty.

My kids aren't keen on EB, no matter how often I tried to
Suggest it.

[frugalfuzzpig]

Yes good point on Fatty. He's a great character!

I remember once being on holiday with my family, and I'd been out with mum and dad while my grandparents stayed in the hotel. When we got back I saw my nandad (aka grandad :o) was reading my Five Find-Outers omnibus. My first thought was NOOOOO he's going to see that the character is called Fatty and that's so RUDE! I was mortified :o

I think with EB it's the stories that are enjoyed regardless of the somewhat two dimensional characters. For me, the stories of secret passages and treasure hunting just gave me the best escapism and it was the idea of caves and tunnels and hidden doors is what fired my imagination, where for some it might be wizards and fantasy stories, or animals, or superheroes. Heck, even now if I won the lottery I'd be finding (or commissioning!) a huge castle house with secret passages built into it!

DD seems fairly similar so far - she's enjoyed animal stories like Jill Tomlinson and will often play fairies/goblins, but what has really sparked her interest lately is shipwrecks. They did a project on it last term and she is fascinated, so she was extra excited to start reading Five on a Treasure Island. We are going to the Cutty Sark in half term which she is really excited about and I'm hoping to find a decent lighthouse to visit too. She's got homework (their new topic is superheroes) to research a real life hero, and she leapt on the chance to choose Grace Darling who I'd never heard of til DH mentioned her :)

She enjoyed the swallows and amazons film (too young to follow the books though I think), and national treasure 1/2, and DH is looking forward to showing her The Goonies!

Sorry am waffling now but I think the stories are still great if you find things like that exciting - and just like any other subject, some do and some don't.

[TamerB]

Not in this thread, curlew, but it is pretty common especially when discussing Jacqueline Wilson or Horrid Henry, as if the child will just not read them because mother banned them. My mother banning a book would have been a sure cert for me reading it- but she would never have known!

[TamerB]

I hate the idea that anyone should just 'pulp' books because they don't approve and become a 'book Tzar'. We can all make up our own minds, children included.