I have deliberately posted this comment about an article The Guardian published 8 years ago after the previous post about an article published in 2024. Both are about the leftist woke class’s campaign to control what is written and how it is written. I wanted to show how the ideological battle for control of the publishing industry is flowing and ebbing with the advantage seemingly going in the woke direction.
The article below provides sound reasons why some adjustment to the language of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five titles is acceptable. Some words and phrases are not comprehensible to kids of the 2000s. But that would be a minority. The context would show what a pullover was, for example. ‘Jumper’ is not a necessary replacement.
The article says that there has been some adjustment to the text through the years, meaning adjustments are not a big deal, anyway.
But sensible adjustment is not the issue. The issue is the ideological campaign motivating the changes. The woke class is never moderate in their action. They will press until the world is remade according to their ideology.
That’s the reason they had to return to the Famous Five series.
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Famous Five go back to original language after update flops
Sian Cain, The Guardian, 17 September, 2016
This article is more than 8 years old
‘Sensitive revisions’ of Enid Blyton books for modern children have not been the hit that publishers hoped for
Six years after Hachette updated the language in Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books in an attempt to make them appeal more to modern children, the publisher has decided to abandon the idea because the new versions “didn’t work”.
In 2010, Hachette announced that it would be making “sensitive text revisions” to Blyton’s 21 Famous Five books. This followed market research that suggested children were no longer engaging with the tales about child detectives, due to their dated language.
Changes made included replacing the word “tinker” with “traveller”, “mother and father” with “mum and dad” and “awful swotter” becoming “bookworm” The revisions also made the language more gender-neutral, with the character Anne altered to enjoy teddies instead of dolls.
At the time, Anne McNeil, publishing director of Hodder Children’s Books, told the Guardian that “children who read [the Famous Five books] need to be able to easily understand the characterisations and easily to get into the plots. If the text is revised [they’re] more likely to be able to engage with them.”
But on Friday, McNeil told the Guardian that the publisher’s “sensitive reworking” of Blyton was not received well by readers.
“The feedback we have had six years on shows that the love for The Famous Five remains intact, and changing mother to mummy, pullover to jumper, was not required,” McNeil said. “We want Enid Blyton’s legacy to go on. Millions of readers have learned to read with her.”
The Blyton estate was owned by entertainment company Chorion until 2012, when Hodder bought everything apart from her Noddy series. Hodder continued to publish a “classic” version of each Famous Five book, without the rewrites, although those too contain some small word changes from Blyton’s originals, published between 1942 to 1963.
Tony Summerfield, who runs the Enid Blyton Society, said: “I can only approve – the closer we get back to Blyton’s original language, the better. I’m not going to gripe at the odd word like ‘queer’ being changed; no doubt in 10 years’ time a lot of words will have changed.”
“If Enid ever got any criticism in her time, it was because her language was too simple. To say she needed to be rewritten in language children could understand is a bit of an insult to children.”