And body-shaming nicknames like Fatty and Snubby aren't sitting well with new young readers either. Fanny and Dick were renamed Franny and Rick for, well, obvious reasons. Let me update you on some recent revisions to your works: Dame Slap of "The Faraway Tree" has been renamed Dame Snap as corporal punishment to discipline children has largely been outlawed. And foreigners were often either shady or had comical accents.Īnd in hindsight, your teenage schoolgirls never had crushes on boys or Duran Duran, nor did they face acne issues or debilitating menstrual cramps.Īnyway, you saw your works being branded "elitist, sexist, racist and xenophobic," with the BBC refusing to broadcast your stories between the 1930s and 1950s for "their perceived lack of literary merit." Or how George of the Famous Five was branded a "tomboy" because of her clothes and her short, curly hair - as if "proper" girls should look a certain way. Some things were jarring though: like how the boys often got to go on risky missions while the girls had to cook and clean. And map reading? Well, I now trust an app called Waze to get me places.īut picnics with fresh bread and cakes, "lashings of hard boiled eggs," all "washed down with lemonade"? I like! The 'Famous' Five has seen diverse adaptations for the screen shown here are the protagonists of the 2012 German film Image: Robert Seeberg/dpa/picture alliance Lack of literary merit I've yet to sample a macaroon that is gooey. Then one grows up and realizes that caves are home to bats, heather can be scratchy and a dandelion is a weed. You fired my imagination and made the most mundane things magical: camping in caves hidden behind waterfalls, lying on heather, eating gooey macaroons, deciphering maps, weaving dandelions into poems. Having attended an all-girls' convent run by Irish nuns, I could relate to most of the (mis)adventures of those schoolgirls. I supplemented this by borrowing your girls' school series of "Malory Towers" and "St. I scoured our humble "library" at home, reading voraciously through incomplete collections of the "Famous Five," "Secret Seven," the "Five Find-Outers," and the "Adventure" series. The first book I read was "Five Go off in a Caravan" - the fifth in your "Famous Five" series.īy the end of the book, I'd wanted to join a circus, go off in a caravan and own a pet chimpanzee named Pongo. The letter writer's collection of worn-out Enid Blyton books Image: Brenda Asirvadappan/DW As of June 2019, you hold fourth place for the most translated author, just behind your compatriot, William Shakespeare. I can safely say that between the ages of 7 and 12, many of the books I read bore your name.Īfter all, your books for children have sold more than 600 million copies worldwide since the 1930s, and have been translated into 90 languages. I grew up reading your books in 1970s Malaysia and I owe my early grasp of the English language to you. The Magic Faraway Tree, written in 1943, has now been revised to reflect 21st-century mores Image: The Enid Blyton Societyįor the uninitiated: google buns had a currant in the middle that was filled with sherbet, and when you bit into the currant, the sherbet would froth and fill your mouth with fine bubbles. You created google buns, long before a search engine called Google dominated our global vernacular. Not to forget the tree's fascinating tenants: Moonface, Silky the Fairy, the Saucepan Man, Dame Washalot and the Angry Pixie.Īnd no book of yours is complete without mention of the most tantalizing foods. They could be pleasant, mysterious, curious or nasty: The Land of Birthdays. Yes, I refer to those whimsical lands you conjured in "The Magic Faraway Tree" - where the tree that grew in an Enchanted Wood had branches that rose high into the clouds upon which rotated various lands that one could visit. On your 125th birthday today, I picture you having a jolly good time in The Land of Vintage Typewriters.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |