A Jolly Decent Story-Teller for Children

By Rosemary Johnson

The ACW Writing for Children Competition finished on Monday 30, September.  Seventy-three members and non-members entered.  A big thank you to all of you.  You will now be sitting on the edges of your seats waiting for the results of the judging.  As is usual with our comps, we have a very strong field.  On Tuesday (8 October) Nikki Salt wrote about discerning which children’s authors will stand the test of time and which won't. 

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35425227

The BBC did not rate the author whose books I read compulsively during my primary school years.  The BBC banned all her stories and plays from the air for thirty years because they were lacking in “literary value" and "such very small beer" and her dialogue “both stilted and long winded".  Despite the BBC, she has sold 600 million copies worldwide.  She is the fourth most translated of all authors and the most translated children’s author.  I’m writing, of course, of Enid Blyton.  Uncool?  Too right!

The language Enid Blyton uses is old fashioned – “Wizard!”, “Smashing!”, “Jolly Decent” – expressions which those who think they know in the literary world object to, but children understand that this is how children spoke in bygone days.  Reading Enid Blyton’s stories aloud to children and grandchildren, I have found no problem with her use of language, which is one of the greatest compliments I can pay any author.  (I would’ve found out rapidly if it was otherwise.)  Her style is fluent and straightforward, which is how it should be for a child audience.  She has a sense of humour - the sayings of Kiki the parrot in the Adventure stories, for instance – and she lampoons authority, especially the police -  Mr Plod in Noddy and Mr Goon in The Five Find-Outers. 

Her worldview is simplistic.  By the last chapter, all the baddies have been caught and the nasty people in the dorm reformed.  A childlike worldview.  Much has been said about her confirming gender stereotypes – as did most children’s writers of her time – but what we in the twenty-first century don’t appreciate is how unusual and innovative was George (Georgina) of the Famous Five in the 1940s and 1950s.  Young readers understand George’s situation perfectly well, better than the transgender activists of today.  Of course a pre-pubescent girl would want to do the things boys did, because boys’ activities – sports, being outdoors, getting dirty – is what children (as distinct from adults) enjoy. 

Enid Blyton made me want to write because – despite her huge output – she didn’t produce enough for me.  I especially enjoyed the Mallory Towers and St Clare’s school stories and, at the age of ten, aimed to ‘fill in’ all the terms Blyton hadn’t covered.  I'm longing to go to the Mallory Towers musical, just hoping to find someone to go with.

So I owe Enid Blyton a lot.  Her novels and short stories have stood the test of time.  She really is a jolly decent story-teller.

Rosemary Johnson has had many short stories published, in print and online, amongst other places, 'Cafe Lit', 'The Copperfield Review' and '101 Words'.  She has also contributed to 'Together' magazine.  In real life, she is a retired IT lecturer, living in Suffolk with her husband and cat.  Her cat supports her writing by sitting on her keyboard and deleting large portions of text.