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).

I was always a huge reader and was whizzing through Enid Blyton at Primary School. Absolutely loved them they were magical.

I adored The Magic Faraway Tree. Pure delightfulness.

There's a particularly charming scene in one of the St Clare's books where one of the nice girls imitates a fat girl eating - but it was only a joke

That said, my DC love Enid Blyton. I do censor them - I didn't allow them to read my early editions of the Adventure books, for example, because of the blatant racism.

'Shut UP Gwendolen, Gwendolen SHUT UP', remember that?

And lovely professional Miss Grayling confiding in Darrell in the sixth that Gwendolen is one of their few 'real failures'!

So much pushing people into the pool and being scornful and all that... vile bunch of girls, they were!

Ah, Miss Grayling was always sharing such information with the 'nice' parents. There was one nouveau riche girl she was particularly snooty about in the later books.

My DS (5.5 &3.5) are adoring having the Magic Faraway tree read to them at the moment. It has really captured their imagination. We stomped through the Enchanted wood in a week - 2 chapters a night (lots of shouts of more at the end) and they were rushing through each morning so they could get a couple of chapters in before breakfast!

My favourite were the Island of Adventure and the Valley of Adventure - didn't take to the famous five format myself..

Would that be the notorious lardarse Jo Jones, Jee?

Yes, ElaineReese you're right. I couldn't remember the name. And you are perfectly right to be critical of her, because she was working class.

And her father was a ROAD HOG. He tells Jo Jones to mind she has fun and doesn't do as she's told, at which Mr Rivers looks away in disgust and tells Felicity to have nothing to do with Jo Jones.

And being the good girl she is, I think she then proceeds to be highly unpleasant to her all term, until the point at which Jo Jones gets expelled for not liking swimming or some such.

I'm going to keep on asking why people give these vile books to their children til someone answers me!

Well I sometimes read them aloud with stupid accents for comic effect, especially if a child is unwell or needs cheering up for some reason. It's a bonding thing

Because they engage children (whether we like it or not) and they enjoy them. In the same way they engaged me (as did What Katy Did - which is also full of strange messages...) Grim's fairy tales are also full of horrendously cruel things happening. The fact that we all read them, enjoyed them, and can now see the flaws whilst not clad in cloaks and pointy hats is surely an indication that they can have a place in entertaining children without warping their minds? They are sometimes a good way of opening discussions on things, and children can be really astute at picking out some of the stuff that is going on that is questionable - at 5 DD has already managed to.

seeker - Some aren't that bad. And many aren't any worse than modern stories (there's just as much classism and othering in Harry Potter, and at least the overt morals and aims in EB are worthy of emulation even if the subtext isn't - compare to lots of modern stories where bullies don't get their come-uppance at the end, or appearances are valued above all, like those bloody jewel fairies).

Also I plan to talk to my children about history and how values have changed - by the time they're reading EB or other stuff, they'll be at school hearing about the transatlantic slave trade and other religions and all sorts, so realising that middle England hasn't always been perfect but used to be very different from London today is going to be important.

Yes they're all very similar - though I thought EB just churned them out herself, unlike Carolyn Keene/Franklin W Dixon who were teams churning out Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys. This isn't a bad thing when children are building confidence in reading and simply need practice. They might even learn a new word or two per book.

I admit I did look at the Secret Seven when my parents dumped them on me recently and decided they were too sexist with not enough plot to make up for it, but I'm keeping the first few Famous Five, a couple school ones, and the R Mysteries, which were all better than many. And her retellings of Tales of Long Ago and Brer Rabbit and Arabian Nights, which are all good introductions to the classics.

My pet peeve is the huge number of people including published journos referring to 'Mallory Towers' - there's only one L!!!
And it's Gwendoline, not Gwendolen.

I actually ended up at a boarding school rather like Malory Towers (huge surprise: one day my parents sat me down, said we were moving abroad, and I had to choose a boarding school from what ended up being a shortlist of two!), and it was a great relief that actually you could be crap at games and still have a good time. :)

I don't agree- yes they may engage children, but I used to love white bread ith butter and sugar when I was 6- that doesn't mean I give it to my children. I think that giving children a constant message that boys are better than girls, British people are better than foreigners and posh people are better than working class ones is insidiously damaging. Of course it doesn't, make them overtly sexist, racist or classist, but it perpetuates and normalises those attitudes which are still pretty prevalent in society. And it's not as if there aren,t tons of other children's books about!

The stories and premise of some of the stories and characters (for eg Faraway tree) are so wonderful for a 7 year old, I remember being so enthralled with them, I don't understand why the publisher just doesn't edit the racist and offensive bits out and work out the story around them?

Because I remembered them from my childhood in such a positive light I never really got why people said they were racist, so...

...I decided to read a chapter a day to my class of 7 year olds once, until I got to a bit where the characters got on a train carriage and everyone had to move seat not to sit next to the dangerous gollywog.... I had to do some quick thinking and I think I abridged that bit... needless to say I read ahead each day so I would know what bits to change!

And I was reading to a class of 80percent African children in Africa!

I suddenly knew what all the fuss and criticism had been about.

I know the new versions have left out a lot of the worst references - villains now have a 'nasty, mean voice' not 'nasty common voice', have skin tones other than 'swarthy' etc - and I think by the time I was reading them in the late 70s/80s the worst golliwog references had been removed (though the word was still there - as I said upthread, they tended to be Mayors and wear smart suits in my books).
As well as changing names like Fanny and Dick to Frannie and Rick, and updating money references to shillings, the latter I think they really shouldn't have because the books are never going to represent modern reality.

seeker - do you plan to keep all books with outdated attitudes away from children, including say Narnia, Swallows and Amazons, 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc? Until when? And what modern classics do you rate as meeting your social requirements?
It's hard enough just finding good adventures for 8-12 year olds that pass the Bechdel Test! Recommendations much appreciated.

If the book has some sort of other merit then it's worth the effort of explanation/editing. Enid Blyton doesn't. Neither does Narnia. Not sure I understand the reference to To Kill a Mockingbird- surely the whole premise of that book is a fight against entrenched attitudes. don't understand the 1984 reference either- apart from anything else it's not a children's book. And Arthur Ransome was actually quite enlightened by the standards of his time on the subject of women in particular.

Someone said further up the thread that it is the adult-free world that seems to engage the children. I think kids love to imagine they can go off camping on their own, sleeping in a derelict castle and outwitting thieves and kidnappers without any adults around. I agree with notcitrus that plenty of real children's classics still contain classism and sexism, though I'd pick different examples, e.g. The Secret Garden, the original Peter Pan (terribly sexist!!) or stories by E Nesbit, and as I mentioned I recently unwittingly came across some racism in Rudyard Kipling, but so long as you abridge or discuss the issues with your children, there's no reason why the stories shouldn't continue to fuel their imaginations.

Seeker - I think we will have to agree to disagree about the whole Enid thing - but are you really saying that Narnia has no merit at all and hence isn't worth editing?

Agree with fluffyanimal - I love Nesbit, but there's some really nasty anti-semitism in some of her stories.

About Narnia- yes they are goodish stories. But the way CS Lewis deals with Susan just wipes out anything good in there.

What did yon mean about To Kill a Mockingbird, notyummy?

But as a child you don't get that at all! You just get the excitement of the fantasy - and frankly if you holding books to that standard of expected equality in treatment of the sexes, then there are virtually no children's books pre 1975 that would pass the 'test'. Bit sad, no?

Mockingbird was Notcitrus - not of the point tbh.

I've not got the point tbh - i.e notcitrus point.

I let my kids watch and read stuff which I find ideologically dubious - the point is to talk about it after/during.

And yes, sorry, you're right, it is Gwendoline - only I've just spent two weeks teaching Importance of Being Earnest, and constantly correcting myself to 'Gwendolen' in that, hence the mistake I think.

Shut UP ElaineReese, ElaineReese SHUT UP!