Disgusted!
Farewell to the awful swotters, dirty tinkers and jolly japes: Enid Blyton's language is being dragged out of the 1940s by her publisher in an attempt to give her books greater appeal for today's children.
Starting next month with 10 Famous Five novels, Hodder is "sensitively and carefully" revising Blyton's text after research with children and parents showed that the author's old-fashioned language and dated expressions were preventing young readers from enjoying the stories.
Bestselling children's author Andy Briggs, who is writing a children's series bringing Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan into the 21st century, approved of the changes. "It's an unfortunate necessity," he said. "The classic books we were brought up on - the Famous Five, Tarzan, Sherlock Homes - need to be updated. Language just changes, it evolves, and the problem is if we don't evolve with it, then the new generation of kids is not going to have anything to relate to. When these books were published, 'jeepers' and 'golly gosh' was modern slang. It makes perfect sense to update the language."
The recent Sherlock Holmes film, starring Robert Downey Jr, worked "because it was updated," said Briggs. "If literature doesn't follow in that path then these books will fall out of print - children won't read them and they will be lost."
Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/23/enid-blyton-famous-five-makeover
The revised editions edited for political correctness were bad enough, but this insult to our and our children's intelligence is just disgusting. I find particular fault with Andy Briggs' comments. The current modernised re-telling of Sherlock Holmes aside, there is a reason the BBC keep re-making these period drama's, and it's not just because they're out of copyright.