The Right to Informed Reading

By DAPHNE LEE

From Tots to Teens, StarMag

THIS column will appear the day after the start of banned books week (Sept 26-Oct 3) in the United States. Yes, even children’s books get banned, or at least challenged. Challenged means “attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group” (American Library Association).

However, in the United States, the Library Bill of Rights (ALA’s basic policy concerning access to information) states that, “Librarians and governing bodies should maintain that parents – and only parents – have the right and the responsibility to restrict the access of their children – and only their children – to library resources.”

According to the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, the list of most challenged children’s/young adult books in 2008 was topped by And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell (primarily for being pro-homosexual and anti-religious) and the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman (for political and religious reasons, and also for violent content).

In the past, In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak, the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling, Dav Pilkey’s The Adventures of Captain Underpants and Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson have also been challenged, for various reasons.

Even Enid Blyton’s books have been the subject of controversy. Despite Madonna famously drawing a blank at her name, Blyton is the best-known children’s author in the world. Most English-speaking Malaysian children of my generation grew up reading her books, and the Famous Five series was even translated into Bahasa Malaysia. Yet, even in 1960, Blyton’s publisher, Macmillan, rejected one of her stories because it contained an “unattractive touch of old-fashioned xenophobia”.

In the 1980s, many schools and libraries in Britain removed Blyton’s books from their shelves because they were deemed racist and sexist. This was followed by revisions to Blyton’s more politically incorrect names (for example, Nigger, Dick and Fanny are now Wiggie, Rick and Frannie) and expressions (“I’m feeling queer” is now “I’m feeling odd”). Now there are those (most recently Blyton’s biographer Barbara Stoney) who feel that these changes are a case of taking political correctness too far.

Do they contravene the right of the reader to read published text in its original, unedited and uncensored form? Personally, I don’t believe in restricting or banning books, but I do believe in being aware of what our children are reading and the potential for their reading material to shape their attitudes and perceptions. I wouldn’t change the names or expressions in Blyton’s books.

Nor would I rewrite the scenes in which boys lord it over girls, or middle-class children laugh at a working-class child’s accent. Blyton’s books are a product of the times in which they were written. They are a sort of historical record of the attitudes of the British then. However, although social snobbery, sexism and racism were common and acceptable during Blyton’s time, this doesn’t mean they were right. I believe we have to make this clear to children who read Blyton’s books now.

I was discussing the matter with an aunt recently and she said how much she enjoyed Blyton’s books when she was a child. “It never occurred to me that there was anything wrong with them,” she protested. I wonder though – could it be that she didn’t notice anything wrong with Blyton’s worlds because she had already accepted that they were unshakeably right?

Books contain messages – blatant or subtle – whether we like it or not. How likely is a child to be influenced by Famous Five’s Julian’s opinion that girls need to be looked after, and are unequal to anything much apart from keeping house? It would probably depend on the personality of the child, and also his/her experience of the real world. Perhaps Julian is just confirming what the child has been taught at home. Hopefully not.

While I wouldn’t have altered Blyton’s text myself, I don’t think the changes harm her stories much. And I don’t buy the argument that one might have to start making Shakespeare and Austen, as well as other children’s authors, politically correct now that we’ve started with Blyton. In the first place, the first two authors are read mostly by adults who are not as impressionable as Blyton’s readers. Also, Blyton’s work has been targeted over the work of all other children’s writers simply because she is the most popular children’s writer ever. Her books have greater reach, and have more potential to cause damage and offence – Blyton’s books have sold more than 500 million copies worldwide and, according to a 2008 survey, she is Britain’s best-loved author ahead even of Rowling.

There’s no need to ban Blyton’s books, or any children’s books. Instead, read them with your children and then talk about them. This takes more time and effort, but you won’t mind – after all, you want the best for your kids, don’t you?

See here for Lucy Mangan's toungue in cheek take on the Famous Five.

Comments

[V Ang]

Enid Blyton wrote great childrens' books. Her work helps to stimulate inquisitive minds, and encourages exploration. I grew up with some and were still searching for more into my late 20s. The minus in this era is her books are very dated and may not appeal to the newer generation.

[Daphne]

Hi Kat. Blyton definitely warped my ideas of England, along with all those series like Upstairs Downstairs and Duchess of Duke Street. As a child, you don't really think of historical context, and you just accept things as stated unless nudged about it.

[Kat Forsyth]

Nice follow-up on the recent Girlsown discussion! I was a Blyton nut - for a few years I wouldn't read anything else - and I've been trying to remember how I thought about them. I'm pretty sure that, to me, they were set somewhere else that wasn't really real. After all, I wasn't British, and I was reading them 30 or 40 years after they were written. There were quite a few words and turns of phrase that I didn't understand at all. In my world children didn't go off camping alone, policeman didn't walk down the street and people didn't know them by name, smugglers were unheard of, and things like lifting your hat when you greeted someone, or the "schoolgirl code of honour" just didn't happen. Because of this, I associated everything about Blyton with some unreal land where things happened that couldn't *really* happen - so I don't think the race, sexism and class thing ever really affected me.

[Daphne]

Thanks for your comment, Johanna. I hope my girl and boys enjoy EB too. Her books are great fun and I still re-read them. They didn't prevent me from growing up feminist either, but I think my mother's influence helped a great deal.

[Johanna]

great thoughtful post on a difficult topic - I read Enid Blyton when I was young and it didn't stop me becoming a feminist (for example!) - and I hope my little girl will read Enid Blyton when she is a little older