Goodbye, awful swotter! Hello, bookworm.

Yes, you guessed it.  Enid Blyton's Famous Five books are being updated.

As usual, I'm of two (or three or four) minds.  And before I even start in on that, it should be noted that Hodder will continue to publish the original versions as well.  So there's no danger of 'jolly japes' being lost to us forever.

So.  On the one hand, I understand the changes being made to make the books a bit less offensive.  On the other, I've always felt weird about the changes made to P.L. Travers' amazingly offensive 'Bad Tuesday' chapter in Mary Poppins. 

And on the other one hand, I understand changing the books to make them more palatable to a new generation of readers -- turning more children on to reading, hopefully raising literacy rates (and, for Hodder, selling more books) -- but on the other other hand, some of the proposed changes seem to be less about modern translation and more about simple dumbing down, like "it's all very peculiar" to "it's all very strange".

I've never been on the Blyton train anyway, so... eh.  It isn't one that I find myself getting worked up about.  If something similar was done with E. Nesbit's books, though, my head might explode.

Comments

[emmaco]

It seems pointless to me. The books are inherently of their time - children running around on camping trips unsupervised, strong gender expectations, the food etc, so updating the language just changes one part of the story. I'm sure some kids can realise there was once a different time when people spoke differently, and the others can just read other books. Updating the language feels too much like meddling with history to me.

[Tim]

I used to love books that were outdated and used outdated terms when I was a kid, because it meant I got a little window onto the past and learned new, weird words for things. Of course, this is me talking, so I suppose I don't stand in for "normal" kids.