Comments | sars: Disgusted!

sars

Disgusted!

Jul 27, 2010 18:52

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 ( Read more... )

Comments 9

casett July 27 2010, 10:38:31 UTC

The publishers updated the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew a long time ago - maybe 30 years. I think they ripped the heart and character out of the books. And those books were a franchise and not a series of works by an individual author. What a shame.

kaths July 28 2010, 11:34:48 UTC

I re-read some of my HB and ND recently, and I found HB in particular absolutely appalling! I thought they were badly written and there were just no consequences to serious events. Eg being put into barrels and thrown in the river, almost having a fatal car accident. And I lost count of the number of times they got knocked unconscious. You expect some suspension of disbelief for books like this, but this was just cavalier.

I did find Trixie Belden held up well from that point of view.

Blyton's Mallory Towers series were still a good read too.

looking4tarzan July 27 2010, 11:11:15 UTC

Oh gods no! I'm sorry sanitising books drives me nuts. It's bad enough they've changed Fanny to Frannie in the magic far away tree as it is. Grr

sars July 27 2010, 11:33:26 UTC

In the edition I recently looked at in the bookstore they'd not only changed Fanny to Frannie, but Jo to Joe and Bessy to Betty.

looking4tarzan July 27 2010, 11:39:14 UTC

I think I'd put it down by then

whochick July 27 2010, 11:44:06 UTC

What's next? Dickens? Shakespeare?

And this is how we become a global community of literary bogans.

delvene July 27 2010, 11:51:25 UTC

Couldn't have put it better myself. Isn't part of reading meant to be understanding the historical context? Argh.

sars August 5 2010, 02:23:13 UTC

They're doing to the book industry what they've already done to film, television and music. Dumbing it down for the masses, but those of us who appreciate more intelligent work are the one's that lose out. I hardly think editing books to fit modern language usage is going to encourage kids who don't want to read to read.

sars August 5 2010, 02:24:52 UTC

One wonders however, if by editing the text they are somehow extending copyright on these new editions. Could that be the real justification? Blyton's works are due to fall out of copyright in 2038 I believe, and then it'll be a free-for-all. Just sad that in the meantime a generation of kids are growing up with sanitised versions.