Apparently it was Enid Blyton's birthday

yesterday...or it would have been if she was still alive.

It was quite by chance I also took some time out to finish something I could do while watching a screen. I borrowed the Senior Cat's DVD player and watched the film "Enid" with Helena Bonham-Carter in the title role. 

I had not seen it before and a friend gave it to me saying, "You should catch up on it because you are interested in children's books".  Yes, I suppose it is something I might have looked at before now. 

I had actually read Barbara Stoney's biography of Enid Blyton. I had also read "A childhood at Green Hedges" by Blyton's daughter, Imogen Smallwood.  

Somehow it was Smallwood's book that came as no surprise. I read Blyton as a child. I had a Noddy book. It was given to me  by my maternal grandparents one birthday. I did not rate it along with books like Marjorie Flack's "The story about Ping" but I do remember it. I still have Ping  but the Noddy book has long gone in one of the many moves we made. I suspect it was simply given to someone else - long before the accusations of homosexuality and political correctness caused it to be banned.

I went on to read the Adventure series,  the Famous Five series, the Secret Seven series and more. I borrowed these books from various sources. My parents never actually told me that Enid Blyton was "bad" but, looking back, I realise they simply didn't encourage me or my siblings to read her books. 

I had so much other reading matter available to me that I wasn't actually too concerned about whether I read the Blyton books or not. My brother was much the same. By the time Middle Cat came along there were plenty of other books available as well. She read some Blyton but probably not as much as my brother and I did. The Black Cat read more of them because she had a friend who owned what seemed like  hundreds of them. (It was probably no more than fifty or sixty but it seemed like many more.)

Several years ago I was child minding one night for neighbours and one of the things I needed to do was "read the next chapter" of "The Magic Faraway Tree". After the light was out and young M.... had settled down to sleep I looked at the book again. I would almost certainly have devoured it as a child. As an adult I found it lacking. The language was simplistic. The characters and the plot lacked depth. It was like cheap ice-cream. 

Somehow I was not really surprised by that. At the same time I could see why it would appeal to a child of M....'s age - six. 

As a school librarian I was questioned about Enid Blyton. It was around the time there was an attempt to ban Enid Blyton from all libraries here. I told parents that there was nothing wrong with Enid Blyton's books in themselves but to read only those would be rather like a constant diet of nothing but ice-cream. I offered alternatives.

I would do the same again. There are now Blyton books in the library. They are still popular but there are many other alternatives now. Some of them are similar to Blyton's books but there are many others which are more satisfying. 

I have tried  not to be influenced by what I know about Enid Blyton. She was not a nice person. I don't think she actually liked children. She liked their adulation and reacted positively to it but that is something different. What was, perhaps still is, a positive about her is that many children who read her have gone on to read many other things. That can only be good.