to feel uneasy about my son reading Enid Blyton books

[frances5]

My son wants me to read him a book called the "Wishing Chair", I have read two chapters of it and it has a pixie in it called "Chinky". To make it worst the drawing of "Chinky" shows an elf like creature with slitted eyes. However I think my son is totally and utter oblivous to this.

Admitally Enid Blyton lived 50 years ago when people didn't know better. But do you think I am making a mistake letting my son enjoy this book? He is even trying to read it himself that he is so desperate to know what happens next.

When my son chose this book I had no idea that it had a pixie in it called "Chinky" other wise I would have diverted him towards something like Ronald Dahl.

Blimey I didn't know there was a William story where he plays at being a Nazi! This must have been written very early in the thirties, when quite a lot of posh English people thought Hitler was a sound man. Does she actually call them the Nasties? If so, I suppose it redeems ehr somewhat, but still, the idea of William dressing up as a stormtrooper doesn't really fit in witht he cream teas and jolly japes image, does it?

What's wrong with killing as many rats as possible? Good idea imo. Would that really be controversial nowadays? There are 60 million of them in the UK now, I think they should be contracepted somehow.

VSS - the Outlaws mishear Nazis as 'nasties'. They have heard adults talking about how the Nazis are threatening violence to Jewish people and taking their shops and this gives them an idea as there is a Jewish sweetshop owner in the next town....IIRC the sweetshop owner is a thoroughly sympathetic character - there is no doubt about whose side Crompton is on, but the whole thing is treated somewhat light-heartedly given what we now know about the Holocaust. Written 1934, pub. 1935.

Agree about the rat one, but they make a game of it which I guess would not be acceptable today.

I guess you could enter a new discussion then re the effects of media reports of terrorist/racist tactics on children just looking at that book (I presume that they learn the errors of their ways in the end). I can see why that particular story could not be reprinted now though.

The William books were my absolute favourites, I had the original hardbacks. Unfortunately my dch aren't interested. The only one I remember about rats is where they set up a rat santuary (with food pinched from the pantry left out on tables) after some little old lady opens a bird sanctuary.
Some of these stories still have the power ot make me cry with laughter. They were out of date by the time I read them - families with a Cook, and housemaids? Teachers who wear mortarboards & carry a cane? Our children will know they are stories, ie invented, just as we did.

BTW the bunny wasn't Pookie, was it? Please don't tell me Pookie isn't PC? The little rabbit with wings?

Anyone remember Orlando the marmalade cat, by Katharine Hayle? I loved the pictures... Sorry to hijack thread, am getting nostalgic. I hate Tracy Beaker!!

Love EB: got full set of SS, FF and Mallory Towers. All very dated, but (as a bit of a cross-pollination with 'over-parenting' thread) I'm just reading My Naughty Little Sister with dd, and that is SO not of today. The children are naughty if they are not good as gold and getting on with their own thing without bothering 'mother'.

i loved enid blyton. tame compared to power rangers . spiederman, gaming et al choices for the yoof of today. also good talking points. whats would be another way of saying chinese eyes etc

Have just asked DS(11) who loves EB stories, whether the use of the word "Chinky" has caused him to make racisit comments to the children of 47 different countries who attend the same school.
His answer a resounding NO! Says he loved EB and cant see the prob. We both recognise they are not the greatest literature ever however they did instil a love of books.
By the way he has now moved onto the Cherub series and IMHO they are a bit :0, but hey ho thats life and it makes for some intersting discussions. As should all good literature. (DS says not suitable for younger readers).

Isn't that because EB was a hopeless alcholic who sat on the sofa all day and told the kids to run away and not bother mummy?

Or am I thinking of someone else?

Haven't laughed so much for ages on a thread because I can see myself taking part in both sides of the argument. I grew up on all of Enid Blyton's books, and have turned out to be an ultra-PC leftist type who only stops short of wearing hemp skirts because they are mostly bloody ugly. But when I look back at them I am horrified by the rubbish in them, and the racism and themism, plus they are very badly written, but I don't think they did me any harm. I was an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa, married a man of colour and blah, blah, but my children rejected EB on my behalf they just thought it was rubbish and gave me other books to read to them

Yes Squirrel I think it was her, think she really didn't like kids, but then again you don't have to to write for them. Come to think of it I don't want my kids playing quidditch and turning into cats either ....

Was she really a hopeless alcoholic? I honestly find that difficult to believe. It just seems out of character somehow.

Pookie rocks, but there are so many exclamation marks in it that I can't read them anymore, but one has to wonder about the Freudian aspects of a little girl taking up with a rabbit with wings .....

I don't think she was a hopeless drunk but I do think that she didn't like kids especially her own and that has been well documented

Yes you expect her to be a jolly hockey type games mistress.

Maybe it was her mother?

If I were any good I'd google it... am overcome by inertia...

Googled away but seems the alcohol thing is about it being mentioned in one of her stories and the US insisted that it be taken out ... how good and worthy of them, the country that gave us George Bush

enid blytons daughter died this week she lives in my town

I had a google and I can't find anything, so perhaps it wasn't Blyton.

Who was it then? That will bug me now.

Well she also wrote under the name Barbara Cartland. Try that.

LOL

And Jilly Cooper as well?

Yes I think so. Fancy you remembering that. She also experimented with a masculine nom de plume, like the Brontes. Her choice was Jeffrey Archer though.

of course

how silly of me not to have spotted that Jeffrey Archer and Jilly Cooper are one and the same.

I read a Jeffrey Archer recently - I was really desparate for english language books. I left it on the S Bahn, for someone else to find - and yes, I do feel guilty.

Guilty that you left it? For a harmless German to pick up and be afflicted? Or guilty that you read it?

at the possible harm done to the finder, of course! Have visions of some equally deprived english speaker reading it in desparation, or an Abitur student wading through it. Really, I should have drilled a hole through it and hung it up in the lavatory.

This thread is long and I am making it even longer.
No two people will read a story and get the same meaning from it, just as no two people will look at a painting and get the same meaning from it.
I love reading books and talking about them to other people who have read them too.
This is something I especially enjoy as a parent.
I would want to read whatever she has so we can talk about it, not just in case of horrid things, like ginger beer, but just for the fun of talking about stories.
Best of luck to anybody who has read this entire thread.