Blyton Lite Easy Meals™
Originally published at tansyrr.com. You can comment here or there.
I wasn’t going to comment on the news about the updated versions of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books when I first saw it a few days ago, and have since seen it grow and grow in traction in local news outlets. My initial thought was that this was in no way news. There have been updated versions of Blyton before, usually to work around issues such as the vocabulary and naming conventions of the day that are a bit unfortunately hilarious now. I used to get terribly snippy about Dame Slap being changed to Dame Snap, and was delighted to find last year reprint collections of the Faraway Tree and Wishing Chair books which not only had the preserved text, but the same typesetting and illustrations as the editions I grew up with.
Most people are pointing to the news story, saying “well that’s silly” and then making some Dick and Fanny jokes. I’ve taken a bit longer to mull over my reaction. The story itself shows two sides: the one supposedly supported by the teachers, parents and educators who point out that old-fashioned language is a barrier to more children enjoying these books, and the one supported by the lone historian (ie book fetishist) in the Enid Blyton Society who points out that other historical children’s books are not treated like this, and while editing books here and there to remove objectionable vocab is one thing, editing them to make them less complicated is a bit dodgy.
The examples given in the article show that the edits are not just removing the now confusing uses of the words ‘gay’ and ‘queer’ or any embarrassing bits of racism - they are erasing the historical language and tone from the books in order to make them “timeless.” Those responsible in fact seem to think this is a beneficial thing. They also seem to have a different definition of what timeless literature is - to me, it’s a book that’s just as awesome fifty years later as it is when it’s written. Not a book that could have been written in any decade.
I would object less if they were doing complete reinventions - taking the concepts like “Famous Five,” “Secret Seven” etc. and turning them into something modern and fresh. But they’re not doing that - they’re just systematically ironing out all the language that forms the character of the novels, and making it as bland, vanilla and easily-digestible as possible.
The question is, who are they doing this for? It’s pretty obvious that it’s not for the children. If you want kids to read, then give them something good to read. If they don’t want to read the Famous Five because they can’t get past a few “jolly rotters” and “awful swots” then give them something else to read. If Enid Blyton is too hard for kids to read these days, then maybe she doesn’t deserve to be quite such as bestselling an author as she was in the 1940’s. That’s okay, no shame in that, she had a good 70 years. Let her rest.
Because if you are basically cutting out that much of the author’s voice, then what is the point of keeping her in print? Keeping books in print is about preserving the text, and sharing it with the next generation. If you have to go to this degree in order to make the books appealing, then why do it at all? How much sugar and salt and fat and preservatives do you have to add to the burger before the nutritional value of eating it is drowned out?
So it’s not about the kids (they can read something else) and it’s not about preserving Enid Blyton’s writing for future generations (it’s changed beyond recognition) and besides, they still print the originals for those who want them. So why produce the vanilla, tasteless, voiceless, timeless versions of the books? Money. Plain and simple. They will sell more copies of the books to schools, to parents, and to children by making them easier to digest. The Enid Blyton brand still means something, and that translates to cash, even if you make that cash by diluting the brand until there is nothing left but a few cherry cake crumbs and an empty bottle of ginger beer.
Tom Summerfield of the Enid Blyton Society pointed out that no one does this to E. Nesbit’s Railway Children. Why should Blyton be different? The answer is simple there, too. Blyton’s greatest value to publishers has always been her ability to sell, sell, sell. Without that, they don’t quite know what to do with her. The idea of preserving her massive body of work as children’s classics just doesn’t fit the mould.
