My God Enid Blyton was prolific!

[Budababe]

Prompted by Roisin's thread I had a look on Amazon for Enid Blyton books and was amazed at how many there are! And how many I had forgotten!

Hope DS likes them all as am planning on buying lots for me him!

I don't care what people say, I loved Enid and my ds1 (8) has read loads. The Mystery stories/Famous Five/Secret Seven/Wishing Chair. I'm only slightly sad that he's not likely to read Mallory Towers or The Girls at St Clares!!!!

Dd1 has just finished Rhe Children of Cherry Tree Fram ansd loved it.
I mapleased as it has given her soemthing different to reads, other than Rainbow Fairies and Tiara Club.
And iut brought back soen memories reading it.

I adored CCTF when I was younger.

Do you find your kids "get" it though - the EB language is arguably archaic now and the whole "lets go out, goodness knows where til tea without the adults" is rather "old fashioned" now, or not?

Well, Lewis, imo, children are a little up themselves these days, and a lashing of (ginger beer) and high-gusto talkin' won't do them any harm.

I think that children are intrinsically old-fashioned. I think that modern life is toxic for children, and I would personally be very happy if my son (when old enough to read) read nothing but EB.

They'll all learn to say 'fuck' soon enough. An early appreciation of 'polite talk', whilst unsustainable in the real world, is not bad thing.

What do you think?

Think you have a point Des although my DD has now adopted the habit of calling me "mother" after reading the Magic Faraway Tree

Am reading The Wishing Chair to DS at the moment and I do admit "jolly" seemed a bit odd! As of course is "Chinky" the pixie!

I suppose when I was a child I read books like The Secret Garden, Little Women, What Katy Did, etc which were all set in a different time and world. I suppose Enid Blyton is a bit like that now - historical fiction!

EB was racist and it manifested itself in her writing - thats why most of the books have disappeared from the public eye (thank god!)

Great post Desiderata, agree with every word.

sleepfinder - was that linked to her time tho? dont know much about it, but just done a quick google and i see the references etc.

hum, maybe mixed m - but it was hardly written in medieval times, its not a problem for most books from that era..I don't think it can be excused with that, to be honest, but I do take your point

I think the phrases used that are now considered racists are from a different time. Not that long ago these terms and hrases were deemed as acceptable, not necessarily right but they were. Hence there appearance in such books.

I have just started reading The Wishing Chair to DD. We simply change the name when reading.

DD really enjoyed The Magic Faraway stories.

Golly, yes. She wrote lashings of books.

I know what you mean, it was just a thought.

Actually i didnt realise until i was doing my googling that she wrote the noddy books.

Hulababy, you've not heard of the 3 little black golly wogs who yearn to grow up to be a white prince?

I think thats a little more than terms and phrases...its positively fascist.

In my doctors surgery there is a mural near the kids toyzone, I pointed out to DP that it must have been the faraway tree cos it looked like it had moonfaces slide and washalots house, and that one was probably silkys.

He had no idea what I was talking about.
How awful.

sleepfinder - never heard of that one, and yes I would find that too much also. I would simply not read it to DD.

i love her books-i have loads.my granddad used to read them to me now i read them to my dc although i do change some of the words-eg,i dont like 'stupid' so say silly instead etc.also dh finds it hilarious ,as were reading faraway tree again as bedtime story for dc,he thinks the characters dick and fanny are funny!

I was in a book shop last week, and it was story time, a class of school kids age about 7/8 were being read to.
It was Ameila Jane, I have to admit i hung about behind one of the book shelves and listened (bed time reading from my child hood).
Came home and went looking for my Enid Blyton books.

Enid Blyton wrote dire sexist classist racist crap (IMO!). I've always found a good way to spot poor writers is volume. A good writer puts thought into what they are writing, and that takes time. EB was entirely formulaic, and very much in the Rainbow Fairies/ Babysiters Club category, she just managed to write a whole franchise on her own. There are much much better books out there, both from the EB era (and before) and more modern books. And they are not all gritty realism either!

nooka, Enid Blyton wrote within her times. If you don't like the 'racist' bits, then avoid those particular books.

It isn't conducive to an understanding of people in general to make such sweeping statements. Enid Blyton was writing before the Windrush came into town, before mass immigration. Her only experience of black skin would have come from tales of derring-do, when missionaries were 'cooked in cauldrons'.

The golliwogg is a Dutch invention, in the European sense. It is argued that it was 1/ just another rag doll but this time with a black face, and 2/ a racial slur on black people. The Dutch celebrate Christmas with St Nicholas (sp) .. who is our Father Christmas, and Schwarze Pete (sp), a little black-faced boy who was his help-mate. It isn't a big leap of the imagination to create a black, rag doll.

For what it's worth, I had a gollywog when I was a child, and it never crossed my mind that it was the racist personification of evil. It was just another rag doll, like my white rag doll. Equally adorable to me.

The jury is still out, and it always will be.

Agree with the whole of Desiderata's post at 00:33. Loved EB myself as a child - she lifted me away out of a fairly dire childhood into something safe, happy, exciting, comforting, magical. I was eager to share them with my DDs and we all still read them sometimes.

That's it, Oen! I had a terrible childhood. EB was my escape.

I had the freedom the Famous Five had, but I didn't have the confidence. Earlier than that, the Magic Faraway Tree and the Wishing Chair were .... well, they were heaven to a child. Earlier than that, Mr Muddle was fab.

I must admit, I always found Noddy boring, but I think he belong in the 1-3 category, and I wouldn't remember that anyway. My ds still enjoys Noddy.

And what about the sexist and classist aspects? I'm sorry there are just far better books to read, including books from that period (and before) which somehow avoid to be so unpleasant in aspect. And in any case jus because such views might have been bear in mind that she only died in 1968, they really are not any more. Oh, and whilst mass immigration may only have started post WWII black people were not unknown in the UK before then, so the idea that her only experience would come from stories about missionaries is a little disengenious - after all the slave trade started way back in the sixteenth century, and England had large plantations then too. Apparently references to slavery have now been edited out of EB, but they certainly were there originally. However my main point is that she churned out formulatic and very limited stories (about 800 in 40 years!) and there are better things to encourage children to read.

I'm sorry but I cant bear to read about blytons book in this way!!!
How many hundreds of children's books have some other meaning?? Some underlying classist/sexist/racist themes??
Mary Poppins had fox hunting in it, Watership Down was huge amongst children but obviously written with ulterior messages, do you think the children understood these messages?? No.

I grew up reading Enid Blyton and a world in which 7 children had a club house with a special password and solved crimes, a magical forest with a special tree inhabiting some of the most amazing characters lived and visited wonderful cloud worlds, other children owned a chair that could take you wherever you wanted to go plus tons more.

For an only child with not the greatest of childhoods enid blyton was my salvation.
I am not racist/classist or sexist, because my parents taught me otherwise and some underlying issues the author may have had never manifested themselves in me.

I shall be buying my children every one of her books along with the roald dahl collection and I feel that I am enough to make my children not become terribly prejudiced because of some story tales.

I'm sure that by reading about 'george' my children won't become transexuals, nor gay by reading about noddy getting in to bed with big ears, so why would a black dolly wishing to be pink make them racist???