Tuesday 11 August 2009

Childhood Reading

Today is the birthday of Enid Blyton, born on this day in 1897 at 354 Lordship Lane, East Dulwich. I only mention this detail because long ago, in another life, I worked at the public library a few doors away from that far from illustrious address - a library where her works were at the time (this was in the days when Political Correctness was sweeping all before it) frowned upon and not displayed on the shelves of the children's library. Nor was the fact of her birthplace ever mentioned or marked in any way - she was, as far as that borough was concerned, a non-person. Not that any amount of disapproval or censorship did much then, or has done much since, to dent the phenomenal popularity of Enid Blyton among children. She seems to be one of those irresistible forces - irresistible only to children, thank heavens - in the face of which criticism is so much wasted breath. Think Jeffrey Archer, but on a vastly larger scale, over a far longer timespan, and with the saving grace that her readers are not adults. I read the odd Blyton myself in childhood and found them, as I dimly recall, very readable simply for their narrative drive - but I was not much of a reader. I'd pick up what might come my way - which wouldn't be much in a non-bookish household - but I didn't care much about books and really read very little, at least until books began to 'do it' for me, around the age of 10 - odd books that I would read again and again: a life of Albert Schweitzer, Black Beauty, Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, Tom Sawyer, then, in a bit of a leap, the bombshell of discovering Tennyson (In Memoriam) and Dickens (A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist), and after that, a few more years along the line, finally getting the guidance I needed (thanks to a really good teacher), I truly became a reader...
It was Sophie King's comment under the Tove Jansson post below that got me thinking about childhood reading. She is so right about the joy of seeing another generation discovering the pleasures of reading - and still better if it's with the same books that we enjoyed ourselves in childhood. In my case, it was as often as not a case of discovering rather than rediscovering - I had never read the wonderful E. Nesbit, for example, until I (or, more usually, Mrs Nige, one of the keenest bedtime readers on the planet) read her to our children. Tove Jansson and most of Beatrix Potter, among much else, I hadn't read - let alone a whole world of superb children's books published since my own childhood. It seems to me that reading to our children is not only one of the greatest gifts we can give them - both in the act itself and in the worlds it potentially opens out - but it can also be a great gift to ourselves, and one of those rare occasions in the reading life when we are not on our own.

13 comments:

  1. I was an Enid Blyton addict!

    I had every book in the Famous Five series in 50's hardbacks, also every Secret Seven (but I didn't like them nearly as much) and also a whole load of other 'one-off' mystery books involving castles and swarthy gypsy children etcetc.

    I was possibly Enid Blyton's number one fan.

    Unfortunately, I stupidly put my entire collection of Blyton books in our holiday cottage that we used to rent out, and some little tea-leaf nicked the whole lot :(
    Oh well, as long as it inspires them to read!

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  2. I thought 'The Famous Five on Treasure Island' the greatest book ever written until I discovered 'Brendon Chase' by Denys Watkins-Pitchford writing as 'BB'. Those books have stayed with me. I still long to live on an island or in a forest.

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  3. Just popped into that very library Nige, your old place of work, though now it seems to have more DVD's than books. I was looking for a Wodehouse or two and, knowing he was schooled just a mile away in Dulwich College, thought the shelves would be groaning with Plums. Sadly, just two in large print. A sign of the times that are upon us? Or is it a glass-half-full, and they are all out on loan?
    Sorry Worm, but I was Enid's biggest fan until that fateful day when my mum sold the set and all my Dinky toys (including a pristine car transporter, in an immaculate box) to the bank manager, probably to clear the overdraft run up putting food on the table. Today, 55 years later, I have still not recovered, as you see

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  4. I think that we eventually managed to interest our children in the remnants of the Blyton collection but their attention turned often to Wind in the willows or Treasure Island or Beatrix Potter, grandma didn't help, insisting upon Enid for breakfast.
    I still sneak a quick read of the intact Biggles collection, hissing occasionally at the villainous Huns.
    Wonderfully politically incorrect, and harmless.
    Odd to think Nige that if the dates coincide, you were slaving away on one side of the hill and I on the other (Havelock Walk in Forest Hill).
    Did anyone ever open up the mass grave of plague victims at the top of the hill ?. In the sixties they were afraid of the consequences.

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  5. Ah Biggles, yes he and Algy were among of my faves. Also the Jungle Book, another Kipling I can't remember, the Wind in the Willows, Treasure Island and those wonderful Durrell stories. A bit later is was the Hobbit (yea) and the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (boo). I never got on with Enid Blyton. Her characters seemed such teacher's pets whereas (I dimly recall) I was more interested in being a tiger in India or strafing the Hun. I'm with Uncle Dick here, some Arcadian glade where you know all the animals and speak their language ...

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  6. Fascinated to read that Enid lived at 354 Lordship Lane. I lived almost bang opposite at 369 Lordship Lane (now a post office) for five years (about 1995 to 2000) and had no idea. A quick look at Google Streetmap reveals that a blue plaque now adorns the front of 354 (nothing for me at 369, sadly) – a long-established builders merchants. It was added after being “voted by the people” following the recent introduction of a Borough initiative. So no thanks to the PC killjoys at Southwark Council.

    I was a voracious Blyton consumer in my early years (especially Famous Five) and with my children now 4 and 6 it’s time to revisit those happy days! Thanks for the memories.

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  7. I read lots of Enid Blyton, and lots of Biggles too. Can't remember a thing about them. Richmal Crompton - that's another cup of tea.

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  8. Small world eh? So many Lordship Lane connections. I don't know about the Forest Hill plague pit Malty (if it was one - any mass burial tends to get labelled plague pit), but I do remember a story some joker managed to get in the South London Press about how he'd got into the tunnel of the old underground railway at Crystal Palace and found a train with a full complement of skeletons all sitting up in their Victorian finery.

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  9. The library's a shadow of its former glory Mahlerman. I used to be hidden away upstairs in the Reference Library that nobody knew was there. Ideal job for someone with lots of research and writing to do - but that department's been unstaffed for years now I believe. Of course Southwark didn't approve of Wodehouse either - probably still doesn't.

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  10. Mark, I too loved the Jungle Book. I also loved these great "Freddy the Pig" books set in the Adirondacks; Freddy, of course, was the hero -- and an antidote to Orwell's pigs. Later loved Edgar Rice Burroughs -- all the Tarzan books, but especially the ones set on Mars. I grew up in a house with older brothers, which I now see *really* influenced my reading. But I had a great uncle who had given my mom complete sets of Mark Twain, Dumas, and Dickens, so there was other good stuff to be had. He also gave us Dante's Inferno with the Gustave Dore woodcuts. I studied those before I could read which is no doubt why I had nightmares as a small child!

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  11. I was quite keen on Blyton's 'Magic Faraway Tree' for a bit. Went through the Secret Seven and Famous Five books but they didn't really grab me - I preferred William Brown and Jennings. The first book read aloud to me that I can remember really getting excited about is The Hobbit; and my first memory of blissful reading myself is Wind in the Willows, at primary school in a high classroom overlooking a vast conker tree.

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  12. The memories that remain are of damp, cold rainy days, and me curled up under a blanket with an Enid Blyton book. It was always summertime in her books....

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  13. Enid Blyton gave me thousands of nights of beautiful dreams. These will live forever.

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