The Enid Blyton Society

I can't find the article online, but today's Sunday Telegraph has a page and a half devoted to 'How to Have an Enid Blyton Summer', with an Eileen Soper illustration from Five Go Off in a Caravan introducing the section.

There's an enthusiastic piece by Anne McNeil from Hodder Children's Books which begins: "Enid Blyton is at the heart of every childhood. She is also my hero. As a long-time editor and publisher of her books, I know that it is the act of writing that makes people writers. The very best authors, and Enid Blyton was one of them, write because their way of understanding the world and themselves comes only in the form of words. They write because they have to."

A piece on 'Blytonesque Places to Visit' asserts that "Kirrin Castle [is] based on Corfe Castle" but also mentions that Enid Blyton visited the La Corbiere Lighthouse in Jersey and that she stayed in Seckford Hall in Woodbridge as a young woman.

'How to Turn a Day Out into an Adventure' encourages children to practise disguising, learn to identify animal tracks and build a raft, and there are some recipes as well - including ones for two different kinds of ginger beer.

I think I will follow their advice!!
Actually it would be a good idea for teachers to treat their students to a day dedicated to a Blyton summer!
Maybe I'll try some disguising this summer, to give it a try, and drink more ginger beer.

I wonder if Corbiere Lighthouse, was the inspiration for Demon's Rocks?

I often find it amusing that these kinds of articles encourage children to 'build a raft' - like it's one of the easiest things to do in the world! I should imagine that building a raft that truly floats is pretty difficult!

Still, it sounds a good well-balanced article - and it's nice to hear Enid being touted as 'one of the very best authors'.

The section on building a raft directs readers to raftplan.com for construction ideas!

I suppose a modern EB book would run like that - children stranded on a lonely island, so they look on their iphones, supposing there's a signal, and look up how to build a raft and sail home!

That's right — while looking on the Telegraph's website to see if the "Enid Blyton Summer" article is available at all (it isn't), I found this recent one: Enid Blyton's cliff hangers "would not have worked today because of mobile phones"

It was a world of shady characters and dastardly villains where adult rescue could only be summoned, if at all, from an isolated phone booth on a country lane.

How much simpler, and duller, life would have been for the Secret Seven and Famous Five if Peter, Janet, George or Julian had mobile phones or tablets.

Indeed Enid Blyton and other classic adventure writers would struggle to introduce many of their twisting plots and dramatic cliff hangers in an age where constant communications have made simple missed connections and misunderstandings less credible, the chief executive of the Society of Authors has suggested....

"There is so much that is positive, but we do have concerns about how to sustain that creativity,” said Ms [Nicola] Solomon to the Westminster Media Forum event, adding: "And not only the challenge of how to sustain misunderstandings and plot twists when all your characters are multiply connected and have mobile phones. Enid Blyton would be completely stuck today."

I remember reading another article some years ago that pointed out that Shakespeare too would have been undone if Juliet had been able to text Romeo to let him know she was about to fake her own death — and the whole narrative of the Bible would have gone in a completely different direction if Joseph could have phoned for help from the pit where his brothers threw him, instead of being sold into Egypt!! But that article was making the same point — with modern technology now enabling people to connect potentially with anyone, anywhere, any time, it's getting harder and harder for writers to come up with suspenseful plots. All of a sudden, Enid being "old-fashioned" isn't such a bad thing after all...

All the more reason why they should stop trying to pretend Enid's plots are taking place in 2016!

Rob Houghton wrote:All the more reason why they should stop trying to pretend Enid's plots are taking place in 2016!

     That makes me wonder if many authors write new stories of a roughly similar type, but set them in the past, before these issues become a plotting problem. Or would most authors feel they need to set a story in the present, and just somehow find a way of dealing with these problems? Would it just be a dead-end to write *new* stories set in a past era?

Regards, Michael.

I think if I was writing a modern version of an adventure type story I would set it in modern day (unless there was a good plot reason not to) and have the children's mobile phones, devices, computers etc either destroyed or lost or lose signal etc. Of course, it could also be a part of the plot - using the GPS on a phone as a tracking device maybe - which might mean the baddies are able to track the children or the other way about. Depends on the plot I guess.

There are some modern children's authors who tend to set all or most of their books in the past — Michael Morpurgo, for instance, is one I'm familiar with. Others are Robin Stevens (Murder Most Unladylike series) or Victor Watson (Paradise Barn series), neither of which I've read, but I've seen them recommended by others here. I don't know whether the "lack of technology" factor plays a part in their choice to set their books in earlier eras, but it might...

I would think that writing an adventure series set in today's world and having to have everyone's smartphone or tablet lost/stolen/rendered unusable in every story could get a bit tedious. On the other hand, it did just occur to me that Harry Potter and his friends and enemies had access to magical abilities and items that would far outstrip any Muggle technology, and that didn't make their adventures any less exciting or suspenseful! So I guess it does depend on the plot and the type of story.

They use ravens for long distance communication in Game of Thrones!

I mentioned this in another thread:

KEVP wrote:It seems to me that if I were writing a thriller today, I would sort of reverse it. I would make the problem too much connectedness, not the lack of connectedness of a bygone era. With all this modern hi-tech, it makes it easier for the bad guys to find the good guys, and harder for the good guys to avoid them. So I would write about the good guys trying to cut themselves off from the hitech communication world so that the bad guys wouldn't get them. Kindof like that show last year "Hunted".

Thanks KEVP - I'd remembered what you'd said, but wasn't sure where it had been posted. It was what inspired me to say what I said above, and I agree it would be a good idea to use technology in a story rather than ignore it, though again, it depends on the plot.

The problem is the "contrived coincidence". I think readers were more tolerant of this in the past (Dickens has a lot of them) but people don't put up with it today. Your hero loses their cell phone the one day that they need it the most. Seems like a contrived coincidence.

But maybe the bad guys steal the cell phone. Or the bad guys do something with their tech to disable the cell phone.

Or maybe my original idea. Since the hero has a cell phone, the bad guys are able to zoom in on it to find the hero. So the hero themself destroys the cell phone so that the bad guys can't find them.