Enid Blyton

[PBMA1980]

Anyone want to start an Enid Blyton thread?

We could talk about a variety of subjects all relating back to Blyton books, from the light (which character did you most want to be to which food sounded the tastiest) to the heavier (dissecting racism and name changes in Blyton books).

My ds is reading EB at the moment. He is 15 but has a younger reading age!!

Meant to add that he has read all the naughtiest girl books (including the ones that EB didnt write)he is reading The first of the Five FindOuters at the moment and he has several Secret Sevens too!!

The Mallory Towers series were responsible for turning me into an avid reader age 7.

I remember begging my mum to buy me the next book in the series, was like christmas when it came.

Also loved the magic faraway tree

It was Five on a Treasure Island that got me hooked on reading - one rainy Saturday I noticed it was the same squiggle on the spine as the Noddy books (realised years later it was supposed to be Blyton's signature), sat down, started reading, and about 6 hours later emerged blinking with a very numb bottom!

I was 5 and rapidly worked my way through the Famous Five, Secret Seven, Malory Towers, St Clares and any others that turned up at fetes and charity shops and eventually I got pocket money and got the last half-dozen new!

I do remember hoo-ha about racism and golliwogs which was why the library didn't have them, which confused me totally. Firstly I lived in an area where signs just said 'no dogs, no Irish' rather than mentioning black people as there just weren't any (and yes, such signs had been illegal for a few years, this being 1978/9), but the refs to golliwogs always had them as the Mayor and similar authority figures in snazzy suits with shiny buttons. It didn't occur to me that a golliwog was anything to do with a black person any more than a golden teddy bear was a blonde person! So I was still pretty confused until a couple years ago when instead of just alluding to the Black and White Minstrel show, some TV documentary actually showed a clip and suddenly I was going Oh My God! It's true, gollywogs really were taking the piss out of black people - or rather being doll reproductions of people who were - but without seeing that I'd never have made the connection.

I've re-read a lot of Blyton recently (parents shifted all my stuff to my house), and the classism now really stands out, but at the time it was exactly like everyone I knew in a nice little town in Surrey. Actually said town probably still has the same attitudes, just a bit more subtlety about expressing them.

I have a vivid memory of being ill when i was about eight, i was tucked up in my Mum and Dads HUGE double bed reading Five Go To Smugglers Top and sipping on hot ribena!!!

I begged and begged to go to boarding school on the back of reading St Clare's and Mallory Towers as a 8/9/10 year old. I absolutely loved them. I had no conception of how much it cost, or whether my parents would miss me. I just wanted to live at a school with all the other girls.

I don't think there's an Enid Blyton book that I didn't read as a child. I may have to re-read them all to be absolutely sure!

I think I've read them all too and now have copies of most for my DCs. I just boggle at the amount of time she must have spent writing all those books and stories...makes me think she must have been just a wee bit mad. The classism and racism never occurred to me reading them as a child but it really does stand out to me now.

Faraway Tree was my hands-down favourite followed by Mallory Towers and St. Clare's. Still feel a bit shorted by my non-boarding school education . I also loved a collection of stories called "Tales After Tea".

Best snack food is, of course, the POPBISCUIT. I also love how she describes birthday cakes and birthdays. Thanks to EB, My idea of a perfect birthday is a cake with sugar roses and my name piped on, a story book, a new red coin purse and a comb .
Was reading one of the Mallory Towers books recently and their midnight feast featured some disgusting combination of sardines, pineapple and ginger cake .

Racism and classism aside, I do like how EB represents simple values: don't be greedy, don't be sly, don't show off, respect your parents and teachers, be helpful and kind, work hard.

SO glad I kept my childhood sets of Secret Seven, Famous Five, Mallory Towers and St Clare's - all bought with pocket money from a large Boots store in Sutton, Surrey in early 70s. DD is now 7 and is loving them too!

I am re-reading the Famous Five series after getting them on Kindle. I love how they have four meals a day - breakfast, dinner, tea and supper!

Five go to Smugglers Top was by far my favourite one. I don't remember noticing any racism etc when I read them as a child, but did as I was re-reading them recently. I was also shocked to read, in Five Go Away In A Caravan, about how Anne and George have to go all the cooking, cleaning and shopping, and Anne says she would never expect Julien and Dick to do such things, because they are boys!

DD (5) loves them. We have done all The Enchanted Wood, some Secret Seven and Famous Five, and the earlier ones of Malory Towers and St Claires. I also loved them as a child, although obviously now I can clearly see the snobbery and racism endemic in them....however I think I have managed grow up to be neither a snob or a racist, so I have decided to share them with DD. As an adult I find the kids in the books pretty insufferable tbh - in particular Peter in the Secret Seven, who is pretty much a facist dictator. Everytime he bosses the rest of them about I want to knock him out!

I loved them too. And since my parents were racists/classist and I grew up in racist Glasgow it made not a jot of difference

At 17 I was at Uni and in with the Socialists and I'm still more liberal and left-wing than anyone I know (apart from one guy who's basically a Union leader)

It is possible to reject the culture it represents and Blyton as a person (though I got a lovely letter from her daughter when she died) and still have fond memories of cosy afternoons at pretend 'boarding school'.

I was lucky enough to get the entire series of Famous Five/Secret Seven/Malory and St Clares/Faraway Tree/Wishing Chair I had as a child (early 70's) at a book fair - they are like gold dust as people hoard them.

It also went some way to mitigate my toxic parents who had thrown out all of my books/toys the day I went to uni - without telling me.

I agree with popbiscuit that the main messages of the books are good moral ones, like don't be greedy, be respectful, share everything...

The famous five also refer to ice creams as ices

And often Julien says, "I think the police would be interested to hear about this" when the plot of the baddies is revealed!

Laurie - I grew up just outside Glasgow - did you go to Glasgow Uni? I was a proud member of QMU!

Sorry to hear about what your parents did - bloody awful.

Oh - and another one here who was desperate to go to boarding school. The fact that my parents couldn't afford it and didn't want to send their only child away were mere side issues as far as I was concerned

DH is always wound up by the fact that the baddies in the Secret Seven are invariably slightly grimy working class types.....

I used to love them too as a child. Just now wondering whether to get the set of 10 famous five books for a tenner on www.thebookpeople.co.uk at the moment for ds1. He's 6 but not very good at reading so they would need to be read to him for now...

DD adores the adventure series. I think the adult free lives these children leave is the main appeal.

Racist, sexist, classist, badly written formulaic pap. Why people want their children to read them nowadays baffles me- there are so many fabulous children's books now- why waste their time on this rubbish?

Oh, and somebody asked how she managed to write so many books. The simple answer is, she didn't - she had a team.

Seeker - it certainly isn't to the exclusion of anything else! She discovered it on her own (playworker read a bit of the 'Faraway Tree' to a few of them at Holiday Club last year...) and she then went looking for them in the library.

I think your assessment of the writing is right tbh, but it does seem to have a real pull for children of a certain age - probably the repetition I don't see anything wrong with offering it as part of a range of options to DD. Lots of fiction is classist/racist to our eyes now (although I accept that some of that fiction is also better written....but my 5 year old doesnt have my English Lit degree behind to aid her in the literary criticism of her texts )

Oh I love Loved Enid Blyton books. Got my my first famous five book when I was 4 and hooked ever since. Mallroy towers and st Claires had them all loved it and wanted to go to boarding school for midnight feasts, had pretty much every single Famous Five/ Secret Seven baring a couple. Naughtiest girl series had them loved them. Wasnt keen on the faraway tree kind of thing, liked the five find outers, adventurous four..

goes off to loft to reread jolly good old chum!

I think some people seem to have q blind spot about them. If any other writer only ever had, for example, baddies who were working class, or girls who could only get to do anything interesting by pretending to be boys, nobody would think of giving them to their children, but somehow it's OK because it's Enid Blyton. I don't want that sort of stuff being normalised in my children's brains!

oh its complete classism, racism, sexism and all the rest. It was actually quite eye opening reading them as an adult. When I was a kid I didn't pick up on it at all and Id like to think I'm no form of phobe or ist.

Not sure whether I would let me kids read them or not to be honest Ive never really given it any thought.

We've been reading Famous Five to DS recently, he loves them, and a 5 year old certainly doesn't care if they are formulaic - so are most programmes on children's TV. We do edit as we go along to temper as much of the racism etc as possible. The only thing that does get me is how ready the characters are sometimes to pick on children who aren't like them, so we usually try to comment on that to let DS know we don't agree with it.

I nearly choked the other day when reading Kipling's "How the Leopard Got its Spots" to DS, as when the leopard asks the Ethiopian why he didn't change his skin to spots as well, the Ethiopian replies "Oh, plain black's just fine for a N." (It was quite an old edition, bet it's not there in today's reprints.) Luckily I am quite good now at editing on the fly.

I think most people can see the huge flaws in them now....and I am sure many chose not to give them to their DC because of that. (Although beware....my friend's DD found them in the library and read them in secret!) I think children are bombarded by many, many messages that do not agree with - whether we attempt to stop them seeing the messages, or allow them to encounter those messages and then help them to rationalise them is an interesting discussion. (Right up there with not giving little boys guns/military play equipment because it normalises violence....and then they go and manufacture a machine gun from a stick.) Personally I think at the moment I am allowing access to any age appropriate material (obviously within financial limits) that DD wants, and then am talking to her about the messages.

"The only thing that does get me is how ready the characters are sometimes to pick on children who aren't like them, so we usually try to comment on that to let DS know we don't agree with it."

I'd forgotten that. rcqist, sexist, classist and condoning bullying! WHY are they still around????