Enid Blyton – not as good as she used to be

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/22/childrens-classics-faraway-tree-enid-blyton

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If you had told me even six months ago that there was going to be a film of The Faraway Tree books, I would have been delighted. I was an Enid Blyton obsessive when I was young. I remember them all so fondly: the Famous Five, even more so the Adventure series. I’d have loved my own Wishing Chair. I wanted to be a Find-Outer. And I adored the Faraway Tree series, which occupies a special place in my childhood memories, as my dad would tell us not to be naughty, or we’d be sent to the Land of Dame Slap.

But, no. Anticipating hours of fun, delighting in the fact that we were moving on from picture books, I cracked the series open with my daughter this summer, to be bemused, confused, and not a little disappointed by how they failed to live up to my recollections. Not only have Jo, Bessie and Fanny been renamed Joe, Beth and Frannie, and cousin Dick cousin Rick (I hadn’t remembered there was a Dick and a Fanny in the Faraway Tree as well as the Famous Five – how odd), but Dame Slap is also no longer Dame Slap! She’s now Dame Snap, which makes little sense. And she doesn’t slap any more; instead, she scolds.

There’s no way in the world I think children should be slapped, but nor do I think they should be locked in cages, à la Hansel and Gretel, forced to sleep in a cupboard under the stairs, à la Harry Potter, and I’m not even going to get into Goodnight, Mister Tom. It’s a story. Dame Slap was a good character; Dame Snap, not so much. But that’s just the modern update – and the film-makers at Neal Street Productions haven’t yet said if they will be going with Dick and Fanny, or Rick and Frannie.

I have other issues with the Faraway Tree, not least the Saucepan Man. He wasn’t my favourite character in the books as a child (that honour went to Moon-Face, because he had the slippery-slip slide in his house), but I liked him. Reading the books aloud, as an adult, I have been startled to find just how creepy he is. He’s not magical, like some of the characters; he’s just a man who drapes himself, for no discernible reason, in pots and pans. And hangs out with a group of kids.

There are charming elements here, for sure: hot-cold goodies, google buns, the Land of Birthdays, the Faraway Tree itself, flying on dandelion seeds in the Land of Giants. But the stories are all a bit dire and repetitive. Naughty visiting child does something silly, perhaps even something as bad as wearing a smart dress to a party. (“You’ve got bad manners, and you don’t do what you’re told, and people don’t like you,” Connie is told.) Ends up trapped or in trouble in a land at the top of the tree. Good children, who like helping their mother in the garden and wearing scruffy clothes, rescue them. Repeat.

So, I’m not sure they’ll make particularly gripping films, but I’ll probably be dragged to see them. Because, just like I did, my daughter loves them – even the Saucepan Man, whose bad hearing makes for endless (unbearable for an adult, hilarious for a child) jokes.

But it’s an odd feeling, finding the classics of your childhood really don’t stack up. Thank God for Roald Dahl, who we’ve also been reading. George’s Marvellous Medicine is better, and much scarier, than I remember. And I’ve just realised that’s why my daughter called me an “old hag” yesterday. Good old Dahl.