Books that changed my childhood - Reflections on Enid Blyton

You can listen to the audio version of this post below.

This is a part of the October 2020 blog challenge. You can find the other posts here.

What are the books that changed your life? 

I found this excellent question in one of the latter chapters of the most recent book that changed my life - Cassandra Speaks - When women are the storytellers, the human story changes - by Elizabeth Lesser. Sometimes I think I must be a terrible writer, because when I read Cassandra Speaks, I found it so incredibly profound and I feel as if it had so much wisdom, but yet, I have no idea how to put it into words. I have felt that way about a number of the books that I felt have really impacted me, where I just feel like the best thing to do would be to just sit and read it out loud so that others could see how incredible it is. 

Don’t worry - I won’t do that. What I will do instead is during this month of daily blogs is write about the ways in which some books, and authors, changed my life.

And today, I am going to talk about the books and the author which occupied much of my childhood - Enid Blyton.

A little bit about Enid Blyton - she shares my birthday (probably why I loved her books so much!) and was born in 1897 in England. She wrote hundreds of popular stand alone books and series. Among my favourites - The Faraway Tree, St Clare’s and Mallory Towers, The Secret Island, and one of my all time favourite books in childhood and adulthood - The Land of Far Beyond - which is a retelling of the Pilgrim’s Progress. Other books from her I remember - The Naughtiest girl, The Wishing Chair and the Famous Five. 

There were so many things I loved about her books when I was younger. I loved the worlds she created. I loved that they were beautiful and magical and delicious, and also terrible and scary and dangerous. I remember the Faraway tree where a different world spun to the top of the tree every few days. Sometimes everything was sweet and edible, and other times there were characters that were menacing.

I also enjoyed when she wrote about the real world - especially what she wrote about the children at boarding school in England. I always say that Enid Blyton books were the reason I went to university in England and spent several years studying and working there - because I wanted the boarding school experience. I wanted to taste treacle tarts, and have midnight feasts, and fill a tuck box. I wanted to run through the fields with the wind in my face, pick wild strawberries and eat them until my hands were stained red, and drink fizzy lemonade.

As a child, reading an Enid Blyton book to me was like escaping to another world. Through her books, I had adventures, and roamed far beyond the shores of the small island I live in. They fed my imagination, and there were also lessons learned - about fairness, about curiosity and about friendship. Many of the books featured children that lived in worlds where the adults were in the background, or absent, and they could roam freely, and make their own decisions - something that I desperately wanted to do as a child. It was amazing to imagine myself living with such freedom and autonomy, and I can see why the books appealed to me so much.

As an adult looking back on it (and lets face it - I read some Enid Blyton books well into adulthood) I can see now that there are things in the book that I don’t agree with. I came across this article recently, that speaks from a modern day perspective about her books. The author writes:

“For those who point out the sexism, racism, snobbery and xenophobia of her children’s books, a faithful chorus praise her timeless ability to captivate a young audience and instil a love of reading… The gender politics – where fathers fulminate in studies, mothers serve up tea, and tomboy George must learn she will never be as good as a real boy – are problematic to say the least.”

And I can see the problems. I have a friend whose enduring memory of Enid Blyton books was the Golliwog, a character that is controversial and considered racist. I can remember references in her books to those who were “foreign”, and even a smug superior air to those who would have been considered “lower class” (although other books such as The Secret Island centered on poorer children who were being abused seeking a better life). 

That being said, we cannot erase our past, which she was shaped by and is a part of. Versions of some of her books which were adapted in the 1980s removed the Golliwog character because of the concerns about racism, but removing characters cannot remove history, and I am not convinced that sanitizing our past will help us in the future. It is a difficult line to walk.

Indeed, there are many books from that era that held those themes and characters, and I also believe that they were a reflection of the time and place. Does that make them right? Probably not. But I think it is useful to read books from an era in the past and gain an understanding of what attitudes might have been like at that point in time. And honestly, that is what I love about stories, and books. I have long since realized that history books also only give a snapshot of the world - based on the worldview and opinions of academics at that time - often male, focused on battles and characters deemed of historical importance, often with little insight into what life was like for ordinary people in that day and age, and I think that having other stories written at that time can also give us more ideas about what it was like - even those that are fictional. In fact, I sometimes think that there is as much truth in fiction - about humanity and the world - as there is in textbooks and newspapers.

In addition, I read those books with my own lens, which was partially formed by my parents, having been raised in Barbados where I had the privilege of representation that young Black children would not have in England. I was also raised largely by my father - who taught me how to cook, and wash as well as swim, play chess, use a power saw, and to think about everything I read critically.

This upbringing meant that I am not invested in gender norms of mothers cooking and serving tea while fathers read the paper and work long hours. It also meant that I believed in my own ability to do things that might be stereotypically in the male domain. I didn’t see myself as being inferior due to my gender or race, and those beliefs came from my upbringing.

Also, being raised by a man who was involved in the Civil rights movement in North America, and being a child who learned Caribbean history at school and at home, Enid Blyton books were only a small part of what I read, and what shaped my opinions of myself and others. I often discuss this with my sister who still has Enid Blyton books on her shelf, and reads them to my nephew. Just like my father, the stories are surrounded by questions and conversations, so that he can start to shape his own beliefs. 

 I definitely think that the books have value, even if a part of what makes them valuable is our ability to look at them critically, and see what lessons they hold for us now.

And it also makes me wonder what generations a century into the future will think about our books - fiction and non-fiction, and what they say about our morality, our choices of innovation over preservation, and our treatment of the environment (to name a few), and it makes me less judgemental of the books written a hundred years ago.

As to how her books changed my life? They gave me a love for reading, and showed me the power of narrative and imagination. They allowed me to dream about living far away from home, and travelling and having adventures - a dream that I made into reality. And reading Enid Blyton books, I dreamed not only of adventures, but about writing about adventures. Those books made me want to be a prolific author, writing my own books, and creating worlds for children to live in.

In my case, the books I write would be adventures about living in Barbados, and the children would look like me - dark skin, hair filled with bubbles and clips, and we would pick dunks and Bajan cherries from the trees and eat our fill. We would swim at the beach, and skip stones along the glassy turquoise sea.

Enid Blyton and her books made me want to write the stories of my childhood, and to this day, that desire still lives in me. For that, I am truly grateful, and I continue to have fond memories of a childhood spent lost in her books.

I send you big love from a small island.

PS - above you’ll find me on my last British adventure, that I went on a year ago.