Modernise childrens books like Famous 5 series by Enid Blyton & other childrensbooks

23-01-2019 4:12pm #1

I read Famous 5 and Secret 7 books when i was small. Nowadays in the era of smartphones in kids' possession virtually all these stories Would be laughed at by the present younger generation.
So could Famous five adventures be updated, or are they consigned to a bygone age, best viewed with rose tinted spectacles?

endacl · 23-01-2019 4:13pm

I’ve a nephew aged 8 who loves them.

Kids like reading.

Foweva Awone · 23-01-2019 4:40pm

I read a politically correct version of one of those a few years ago, where they took out the golliwogs, renamed Fanny to Frannie and Dick to Rick etc. Just not the same.

Swiper the fox · 24-01-2019 9:47am

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I read Famous 5 and Secret 7 books when i was small. Nowadays in the era of smartphones in kids' possession virtually all these stories Would be laughed at by the present younger generation.
So could Famous five adventures be updated, or are they consigned to a bygone age, best viewed with rose tinted spectacles?

My kids all love(d) Enid Blyton, she was a great storyteller, I read to them all or have done and she’s head and shoulders above most of what’s out there

hotshots85 · 24-01-2019 10:20am

It could be called Re-book instead of a Reboot.

***Tumbleweed****

EdgeCase · 24-01-2019 10:26am

It's a bit like the argument that Americans don't understand anything outside of US English and you end up with something like "Sherlock Holmes strolled down the sidewalk to downtown London."

Kids reading those books are looking at a world as it was when the author wrote it. It's a different time and the language of that time. Surely that's part of the fun of reading it? It doesn't have to be entirely familiar.

24-01-2019 10:40am

^^ US Kids would ideally benefit from the likes of a Danger Mouse DICTIONARY too.

Polar101 · 24-01-2019 11:04am

"And then he ordered takeaway on his smartphone"

I don't know, when I read the books in the 80´s, they felt a bit old-fashioned, but I didn't feel that was a problem. Would it really be any different now? Sure, a kid who doesn't like reading probably wouldn't enjoy Blyton - but you'd think it's the adventures that matter to the rest.

bolgbui41 · 24-01-2019 11:57am

Enid Blython's books were old fashioned when I read them in the 90s; aspects of them were outdated when my mother read them in the late 60s and early 70s, and some where already behind the times when my grandmother read them in the early fifties. Yet we all loved them and, today, my seven-old-cousin is enjoying both David Walliams and the Faraway Tree books to the same extent.

Surely one of the great joys of reading is that it can transport you to different places and different times and let you experience things that you'd never know otherwise? I loved the Mallory Towers books, Nancy Drew, Little House on the Prarie - all series of their time, written for a contemporary audience, and far, far removed from my own life in rural Ireland. It's the same reason genres like fantasy and historical fiction exist in children's literature. It's not so much the setting that counts as the story - like someone else mentioned, the adventures in the Famous Five can still be exciting today as they were seventy years ago.

I think you're not giving children - and their imaginations - enough credit if you think they won't read something they can't immediately relate to.

NIMAN · 24-01-2019 3:43pm

I just bought my 9yr old Moonfleet, written in 1898!
Wonder how it will read in his modern world?

I remember reading it at school as a youngster and loving it.

Going to read it when he's done with it.

SEPT 23 1989 · 24-01-2019 3:45pm

It might be a nice escape for them

Modernise childrens books like Famous 5 series by Enid Blyton & other childrensbooks

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