To wonder why Enid Blyton has such enduring appeal

[balletnotlacrosse]

Even today, with such a huge amount of children's books available, modern children still become gripped by the Famous Five, Malory Towers etc. Better written books such as The William Books, The Chalet School etc don't seem to have nearly as much appeal to young readers.

Is it because she doesn't really ground her books in a particular time? I know some of the language and activities make it clear they're not set in the 21st century, but even though most of her books were written during the 40s and early 50s there's no mention of rationing, fathers having fought during the war or any very specific references to what was quiet a seismic period of British history.

Just curious to know what the on-going fascination with her books is for today's children?

They do have better character development and slightly deeper storylines. But yes, the drugged milk did get bandied around a bit too often. But those chalet girls were a lot more delicate than robust Darrell and her mates with all that outdoor swimming and hockey playing.

So good I posted it twice

My daughter loved the magic faraway tree books and I used to read them Amelia Jane when they were younger. Also liked the Naughtiest girl books but she never liked Malory Towers or famous five which I loved as a child. The first EB book I remember reading is the Children of Cherry Tree Farm where some children go off and meet a homeless man I even remember his name Tammylyn anyone else remember this one? Sounds very dodgy these days!

I'm another who must have read every single EB book, from the Ten Minute Tales/fairy stories for small children to those immensely tiresome Mr Pinkwhistle/Mr Meddle books through her various Mr Galliano's Circus/Mistletoe Farm/Cherry Farm/ Faraway Tree/Famous Five/Secret Seven/Adventurous Four/'Secret' Mountain/Island/of Killimooin/Spiggyholes etc books to the 'Castle/Circus/Valley/Island etc of Adventure to the 'R' mystery books to the Five FindOuters to the school stories. And I'm still leaving out hundreds of books!

I can see exactly why I found them so reassuring as a young child, and why I find them in many ways so ghastly as an adult. As a child I adored the 'bunch of children off on their own' trope and was reassured (in a way I now find slightly pernicious as an adult) by their very limited characterisation and vocabulary - you were never going to find a concept or word you didn't recognise in EB, once you got past the archaic slang like 'fathead' etc - and everything was carefully dehistoricised, even those books (some of her most interesting) that dealt most obviously with WWII.

Like The Adventurous Four, where the inevitable four plucky children get cast away and encounter a nest of German subs and seaplanes, but the words 'German', 'Nazi' or 'swastika' are never used - just 'the enemy' and the 'crooked cross' on the planes. Or The Valley of Adventure where Jack, Philip, Lucy Ann and Dinah and Kiki the parrot end up in an Austrian valley with some Nazi collaborators trying to rediscover wartime looted church treasures hidden in caves. Again, I only made the connection years later - the connections to the war are deliberately inexplicit, and no one actually says 'Nazi' or 'collaborator' or 'German'.

And the xenophobia, racism, sexism and classism are very problematic to me as an adult. And were in fact problematic to me as a small child even though I wouldn't have had the vocab to explain, other than that neither George nor Anne nor Darrell any of the other girls expressed my sense of what it was like to be a girl.

Emily, I remember Cherry Tree Farm - he was called Tammylan, though, as far as I remember, and was less 'homeless' than a sort of 'back to nature' hermit hippy who lived in a cave in winter and in a willow hut in summer and helped out farmers with his Magic Healing Animal-Calming Hands. Mind you, one of EB's other 'hermits' (in Mistletoe Farm) turned out to be a wrong'un who wandering around murmuring Tacitus in a robe and sandals to cover up his burglaries at isolated farmhouses.