(no subject)

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

Firstly I've got to say how much I'm enjoying Biskybat's fanfic. Enid Blyton is undergoing such a revival at the moment:in the library with my daughter this afternoon she chose a Malory Towers book. I was a bit doubtful as I never liked Enid Blyton, but she wanted it because her friends are all reading them. The shelves were groaning with reissued Blytons with revamped covers. This brings me onto my point - would Antonia Forest be more widely read and in print today, if she had kept her stories in the same time period throughout? (I mean the post-war 40s) Would modern teachers/librarians/children cope with the aspects of Marlow world that they dislike if those aspects could be accepted as part of the period? Plenty of children's classics survive featuring privileged middle class kids with nannys and cooks etc. and the survival of Malory Towers etc. shows that boarding school stories are not a problem. But is the Marlowverse just too much of a problem transposed into the seventies?

Comments

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Personally I find the first three books more tricky to relate to (both as a child and an adult) because I find the upper-class-ness more jarring, even though it is "in period". I mean the way the children address their parents so politely as "mother" and "father" for example, and the respectful attitude that goes along with that. I find Mrs Marlow a very two dimensional upper class mummy in those books. In the middle books the characters feel very comfortably "themselves" and an authentic family to me. whether they have ponies and go to private schools doesn't really matter.

It would be really interesting if, for example, the school stories were repackaged with modern covers and described as the "Kingscote" stories for example, to see whether they could appeal to modern children. I think they could, and also Peter's Room and Ready Made Family, and actually even the Players' books too (although I think their audience would be a very narrow, but possibly very appreciative, one). The Kingscote books, having very much their own "world" which changes comparatively little, would probably stand the best chance though.

My daughter likes Enid Blyton too JackMerlin! Though she can't read it herself yet. But I think Enid Blyton appeals to a very different group of readers - 7-9 year olds can read them, whereas I can't imagine most 7-9 year olds tackling Forest! They are pacy, inventive easy reads, without any complex psychology...not really AF, despite the subject matter. (I'm not knocking Blyton: she was, in her way, a genius.)

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

It would be really interesting if, for example, the school stories were repackaged with modern covers and described as the "Kingscote" stories for example, to see whether they could appeal to modern children.

That's pretty much what happened in 1984, when I bought Autumn Term just after finding out my family were moving abroad and I was going to have to go to boarding school. All 4 Kingscote stories were reprinted with then-trendy illustrations on the cover. I quite liked them but really as a 9-year-old the emotional complexity was too complicated for me (and the Guides section in Autumn Term was hugely stressful!) and I didn't re-read them until I was an adult (AT not for another decade...) I retreated for another couple years into the security of Blyton's characters where characters were nice with one well-explained character flaw which they worked to overcome, while the not-nice ones saw the errors of their ways.

Given how rapidly the books vanished from the shops, while the hugely-dated Chalet School thrived for years in Armada reprints, I suspect others had a similar opinion. Blyton is accessible to a five-year-old (when I first read Malory Towers). Chalet School shows a little bit of the viewpoints of the staff but still in a childlike way. The complex characters of Forest just aren't really childrens books even though they have children in.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

I agree and disagree. As a child I also found the Guides bit of Autumn Term (and even more so when Nicola runs away to see Giles) too traumatic to read regularly, and the same with End of Term (the arguments between Tim and Nick). However it didn't put me off reading the rest of the books. I was at a stage of reading where I had probably left Enid Blyton and The Chalet School behind me, more-or-less, when I really started enjoying Forest though (hard to remember exactly).

I do think the Players books are more adult books though...I have fantasies of writing an adaptation of them for Radio Four, think they would make a great serial.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

just wanted to add, think I discovered the books through those same 1980s puffins paberbacks (Margery thingy covers)? also had some rather lurid looking Faber fanfare paberbacks of the holiday stories.