The Blyton in my suitcase

When I first went to boarding school I took one of my favourite books with me, packed in my overnight case. It was one of Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers books, or it could have been St Clare’s. It’s been a long time since I was devoted to them and they all blend into one in my mind. I suspect it was the one about the French girl who polished an older girl’s shoes with anchovy paste. Claudine she was called. In fact, yes, Claudine at St Clare’s seems very likely.

This is not my original copy - all my Blytons went to a secondhand bookshop when I needed money to buy more books.

By the time I was in bed that night, the book was firmly hidden at the bottom one of the two drawers I’d been assigned. It would not emerge until I sneaked it out to take it home at half-term. I lay on my thin horsehair mattress on my iron bedstead between cotton sheets and woollen blankets (bear in mind this was 1975 and we used duvets and polycotton fitted sheets at home). My deep love of Enid Blyton was over. At my new boarding school, they did not approve of Enid Blyton.

It was another girl who told me that Claudine at St Clare’s wouldn’t do. My whole idea of boarding school came from those pages. Those books were why I’d been so keen to go. I suspect by the time the nameless girl told me this, I’d already realised my picture was wrong and felt that to have the book would be to demonstrate my ignorance. 

But it was true that there was not a single Enid Blyton book in the library. No teacher ever explicitly told me that they had something against her. Not that I would have given them a chance. That book and my previous devotion stayed firmly in the past when I was at school. Didn’t stop me Blyton-cramming the moment I got home, of course. There were lots of home things that you simply didn’t mention at school. Blyton was one of them.

I do wonder how Enid Blyton became such a one-woman story production line. There have been many authors who produce many books in a series or two, but Blyton was so prolific in so many areas. I have no great affection for the Famous Five or Secret Seven, but I loved the Five Find-outers of the ‘The Mystery of…’ books, and the kids in the ‘… of Adventure’ series. The Wishing Chair passed me by, which is odd because magical fantasy was much more up my street as a child than anything realistic. When I’ve reread Enid Blyton in recent years I find that they are so mind-bogglingly racist, sexist and classist it makes my head and heart ache. That’s not why my school didn’t approve of Blyton of course. She was right at the heart of the mainstream in the 1970s. They had judged her on the quality of her prose and found her wanting. I have no argument with this. What I would say though is that it was probably Enid Blyton who made me a reader. I knew every time I picked up one of her books and I would find a story that would easily move from words on the page to action in my mind. I have to think this is a valuable quality in a writer for children.

Why kids SHOULD read Enid Blyton

When I was ten I went to boarding school. Tucked into the side of my overnight case was my favourite book: Claudine at St Clares by Enid Blyton. But by bedtime, the book was hidden at the back of my drawer ready to be surreptitiously returned home at half-term. Within hours of my arrival, I had discovered that Enid Blyton was banned at my new school. I do not remember ever having this explained to me, and at the time I would certainly not have been able to distinguish between the books which were on offer in the school library and the Enid Blyton books I loved. I simply accepted the ban and carried on reading her books at home with an added frisson of guilty pleasure.

The trouble is, of course, that parents and teachers feel they need to quality-control their children’s reading. Enid Blyton does use dull, repetitive language, and the pervading tone is of talking down to the reader. Blyton’s books are peppered with sexual and racial stereotypes considered unacceptable today (although in modern reprints the publishers have done their best to remove these). And that’s before you get to the whole middle-class thing...

But in spite of all this, and even getting on for half a century since her death, there are plenty of kids who still love Enid Blyton. The language we adults see as uninspiring gives many children their first taste of fluent reading. Because they don’t have to think too hard about what the words mean or how the sentences are structured, they may for the first time experience that feeling of running their eyes over the black squiggles on the page and having them transform into a story in their heads. Allowing kids to discover that they have this amazing, magical skill, is, I think, key to turning them into readers. And there’s a wealth of Blyton to read. With some series fiction, children may be left not knowing what to read next when they’ve finished the series. They may have discovered the fluent reading trick, but their focus has been narrowed. But Blyton’s prolific output means that once a child has discovered her books, he or she may read their way through all manner of stories: adventure, fantasy, family, detective.

So, let them read their fill of Blyton. Chances are they will one day turn round and tell you the books are boring. And you can always speed the process up a bit. Do they read and re-read the Malory Towers and St Clare’s books? So provide them with some other school stories. What about What Katy Did at School (Susan Coolidge) or Charlotte Sometimes (Penelope Farmer). Move Famous Five fans onto the Young Bond books by Anthony Horowitz or Robin Stevens fabulous Murder Most Unladylike books. You could introduce Faraway Tree and Wishing Chair fans to E Nesbit.

One word of warning though. Don’t ever, ever read Blyton out loud if there is any way you can possibly avoid it. Aloud, all the banality of the language comes plodding out, and you’ll find no matter what a skilled reader-aloud you are, you just can’t help sounding like a comedian doing an imitation of Enid Blyton.

Oh my, jolly hockey sticks and lashings of ginger beer!

Blyton to relish
The …of Adventure series
Kids go off on adventures in far-flung places. Remember Willard Price’s adventure stories? These are like that with a little less of the shrunken heads and shooting.

Naughty Amelia Jane series
Because everyone wants to believe that their toys get up and mess around when they go out of the room…