Enid Blyton - what changes are/are not OK?

[VictoriaOKeefe]

My example:
Jo-Jo in the Island of Adventure - i think Jo-Jo should have been kept as a black villain but with the "rolling eyes" and "nigra" speech removed. Changing him to a white man sends the dangerous message to children that a member of a marginalised group cannot be a nasty, small-minded jerk (as TPratchett put it). Women are marginalised but i wouldn't pee on my cruel abrasive mother if she was on fire.

In general think books should be left as they were originally written, I'm not even that keen when the author makes changes. I don't think they should be banned or burned, although I've sent some of mine to be recycled as opposed to the second hand book store when I've really disliked them.

Having said that I don't understand the Enid Blyton love. They were pretty rubbish books when they were originally published, even setting aside the sexist, classist and racist writing. She wrote several books a year and as a result they are really formulaic. Now we have a large children's publishing industry plus a large back catalogue so why turn to Enid Blyton at all?

Betrand et al: my point is that most right wingers would disagree with editing of old books. It's very much a left wing cause. And I'm correct that the average person is not as left wing as the kind of people that post on high brow internet forums.

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Sorry about the stars. Pressed post way too soon.
The problem is that you can unconsciously absorb the racism/sexism while you are too young to analyse it.

This is the main problem with EB. 5-10 year olds are sponges for information and any negative opinions in the text can be absorbed. It's not always easy to have a conversation about why the famous five are so condescending to poor people or so mean about girls, for example.
Its simpler to read one the many excellent modern books which you don't have to edit or stop and explain every 5 minutes.

This is the main problem with EB. 5-10 year olds are sponges for information and any negative opinions in the text can be absorbed. It's not always easy to have a conversation about why the famous five are so condescending to poor people or so mean about girls, for example.

I read Enid Blyton books at around 7-10 years old unsupervised and don’t hold the negative views that the characters in the books had. Do you? And if not, why do you think children now will?

You know what? The people on the right that I know don't want their kids reading books where racism, sexism and vile behaviour is considered normal or even desirable. Particularly books like that with formulaic story line and a vocabulary of about 250 words. They are only kept alive by nostalgia. Let them quietly fade away

I'm interested in whether people would be happy for their children to read it as is if their children were black. Or is it a set of books that's off limits to black children because of its content, but it's fine for white children to read? Is it easier when you aren't the group being marginalised to be magnanimous about how things should stay 'as they were'?

Really I think these books are a relic of another time. I wouldn't be encouraging my own children to read them as there are plenty of better children's books with a more modern attitude. If they do, we will have a discussion about the content within, but I think it's unlikely a modern child would read Enid Blyton books without being shown them first.

I think the content should stay as is, but they should stop flogging then or trying to re-release them and they should just be left to die away. If we're going down the re-release road then yes, I think changes are appropriate. There's a reason one of Agatha Christie's book had its name changed.

I'm interested in whether people would be happy for their children to read it as is if their children were black. Or is it a set of books that's off limits to black children because of its content, but it's fine for white children to read? Is it easier when you aren't the group being marginalised to be magnanimous about how things should stay 'as they were'?

Really I think these books are a relic of another time. I wouldn't be encouraging my own children to read them as there are plenty of better children's books with a more modern attitude. If they do, we will have a discussion about the content within, but I think it's unlikely a modern child would read Enid Blyton books without being shown them first.

I think the content should stay as is, but they should stop flogging then or trying to re-release them and they should just be left to die away. If we're going down the re-release road then yes, I think changes are appropriate. There's a reason one of Agatha Christie's book had its name changed.

Yes, I'm sure those friends would be considered very "right wing" ... in North Korea!

commonarewe: Exactly. I always like to remind my friends on the left that although since the seventies, the middle-class left in the West has seen migrants as the source of new restaurants, their sacred working-class still largely sees migrants as a threat to their jobs. The working-class didn't change but the left did.

How have they changed "little black doll" to be released now? Or is it okay for that utterly disgusting book to die, but not others?

Dame Snap is ridiculous.

I'm interested in whether people would be happy for their children to read it as is if their children were black. Or is it a set of books that's off limits to black children because of its content, but it's fine for white children to read? Or yet another occasion when black parents have to explain to their children why there are attitudes like that in a book that's still being touted as a great piece of children's literature? Is it easier when you aren't the group being marginalised to be magnanimous about how things should stay 'as they were'?

Really I think these books are a relic of another time. I wouldn't be encouraging my own children to read them as there are plenty of better children's books with a more modern attitude. If they do, we will have a discussion about the content within, but I think it's unlikely a modern child would read Enid Blyton books without being shown them first. How much of this is just our own nostalgia over our childhoods?

I think the content should stay as is, but they should stop trying to re-release them and they should just be left to die away. If we're going down the re-release road then yes, I think changes are appropriate. There's a reason one of Agatha Christie's book had its name changed.

The problem is that you can unconsciously absorb the racism/sexism while you are too young to analyse it. It becomes normal-part of your mental furniture. The fact that there are people on here talking about George as a good role model proves my point.

Well said Bertrand. I thought the same.

Threads like this make me question if I will ever truly belong in the UK, even though I was born and raised here.

Though I was read Enid Blyton, and DM still has some of my books
The Magic Faraway Tree
Naughty Amelia Jane
Tales from Long Ago
Mr (totally forgot his name)
are ones kept

I remember I liked The Secret Seven at some point in time . However, unlike some PPs, I really don't recall much about any of them . Then again my memory is not great at best of times.

I grew up on Enid Blyton. I'm not sure being a leftie makes any difference to your view. I'm one, and don't think they need changing at all. I've got all my old Famous Fives and Secret Sevens. I had to buy a new set of the Malory Towed books but thought it was silly the way they changed the money - why do they think children shouldn't understand that people used to use different money? I do have a discussion with DD that some of the characters in Malory Towers seem very mean, which I didn't notice when I was reading them growing up.

I also still have my original copy of The Enchanted Wood but had to buy new versions of The Magic Faraway Tree and the Folk of the Faraway Tree, so DC began with Jo, Bessie and Fanny then wondered why they'd all got new names in the second one. And don't get me started on Dame Snap - shouting very loudly on children's ears, how terrifying !

Dd is churning through Blyton, having started with my original Faraway Tree and Wishing-Chair. Ds found them too scary, especially the idea of children being hit (Dame Slap etc), so had to reassure him that yes, children did use to get hit routinely if they didn't do as they were told immediately, but I didn't think it would help so I don't,and teachers aren't allowed to any more (and yes, I got hit by teachers a few times). Dd just thinks it hilarious.

I'm not sure, but I think the Secret Seven's four totally unmemorable characters - two boys, two girls - have been swapped about a bit, making them less sexist, but Peter is still a bossy git, which I mention when I read a chapter. I've also been explaining how many people in the 50s thought girls and boys should do different things which is why the Famous Five books go on about George. When I read chapters out loud I leave out some of the mentions of good as a boy, who gets asked to wash up, etc, and emphasise that Julian, Jo etc are older than the girls, as well as substituting odd/wierd/funny for 'queer' - and reading the odd chapter helps with explaining stuff like smoking, the wireless and telegrams, money, as well as the attitudes, and can explain eg about Dummy the brain-injured porter, who apart from the name is portrayed remarkably sympathetically (only the baddies laugh at him).

I don't have a copy of Island Of, and won't bother seeking it out, as it was yet another secret passage/sea one, and the sequels were much better. Though I managed to read it a few times age 9-10 and never noticed Jo-Jo was meant to be black, for what it's worth.

I checked the other day and Darrell 'shook Gwendoline hard' rather than slapping her, which is better than slaps getting changed to mere telling off but given that the book makes clear Darrell is in the wrong despite being mostly a decent person (which is still quite rare in kidlit), I prefer the original slaps.

Thing is, most of the churned-out modern series that attract kids and boost their reading fluency are probably more sexist and less discussed with parents than Blyton and more likely to be taken as role models (Blyton is the land of when Grandma and Grandpa were young, a time both hilarious and mythical). Being well meaning yet in retrospect a bit patronising towards random foreigners, gypsies, disabled people is still a lot better than current books where such people are still restricted to Issue of the Week or totally absent.

" Being well meaning yet in retrospect a bit patronising towards random foreigners, gypsies, disabled people is still a lot better than current books where such people are still restricted to Issue of the Week or totally absent."

Blimey. Have you read any modern children's books?

No one in their sacred working class give the Bennite Bowdlerisers the time of day - as Bender in Futurama mocked them - "I'm a conscientious objector - you know, a coward!"

“No one in their sacred working class give the Bennite Bowdlerisers the time of day - as Bender in Futurama mocked them - "I'm a conscientious objector - you know, a coward!"”

I know what all those words mean individually- it’s just when you put them together they stop making sense......

It isn’t a case of being patronising but downright racist.

DS read my old EB books that came to me via my DMs sister who grew up on them in the 1950s. Certainly unamended.

Maybe OT, but what's folks thoughts on how books that have been "revised" to match modern sensibilities should be sold ? Because I'd be pretty hacked off it I bought a book that was labeled as being by "Author X", only to discover that it's not actually the book "Author X" wrote, but another book based on that book, but with amendments by some anonymous committee ?

Speaking of children's books and censorship, apparently Winnie the Pooh is off-limits in China ....

I'd agree with the point if it were true that today's children had evolved to have special spongelike brains which selectively absorb only the problematic behaviors and concepts they might read in books and act out accordingly. It's basically saying having read EB or any other dangerous mind-shaping material as a child you're incurably infected with racism and sexism like they were strains of literary hepatitis but concepts of fairness, kindness and inclusiveness you might read and see modelled around you are filtered out.

It just doesn't stand up to scrutiny because somehow many of the people I know, and I like to include myself and presumably some of the posters here, who read EB as children somehow managed to grow up into fairly progressive and liberal thinking adults. Are we saying people like that have a kind of magical immunity that no child today can possibly have?

I grew up in the 60s and 70s, read anything and everything I could get my hands on from being very young, was exposed to very difficult and problematic concepts in some of the material I read - Last Exit to Brooklyn at 12 which in retrospect probably wasn't a great idea since it disturbed the crap out of me - but I think everything I read helped me develop into a questioning, critical, open-minded adult rather than the opposite.

The problem with EB for today's progressive is that it raises questions about our white past and white behaviour that we're now too squeamish and uncomfortable to confront so we erase the lines and write something more sanitized, more palatable over the top of it to make us feel better about ourselves. But, once we've made the past into a place full of only rainbows and unicorns, how do we then explain to our children where today's ugly and unpleasant comes from? When there is no historical record or context of wrong because we have destroyed them there is no reference by which we teach our children that wrong exists, why it exists and how to tackle it.