The Ban on Enid Blyton.

[Daisy]

To drag us back on topic, I grew up on a diet of Enid Blyton, but I read other authors too and really liked Kathleen Fidler's Brydon books and Dean series, as well as Brent-Dyer's Chalet books and L.M. Montgomery's Anne series. Somehow the excitement of reading seems to have been lost to what seems like the majority of children these days.

[Rob Houghton]

I agree. Although I mainly read Enid Blyton, and didn't even consider other writers (except comics, Mr Men books, annuals, etc as I said previously) I was certainly excited for reading and would love to 'disappear' into different worlds and get lost in a book - and I really did get lost in them too! Children nowadays have so many distractions - plus lots more homework to do - and the internet - and snapchat etc - and computer games. I also wonder whether imagination has been taken over by virtual reality games etc - so that children no longer 'need' to use their imagination - or maybe they have forgotten how to a certain extent - because fantasy is all around them in computer games and apps and online etc.

The greatest thing I have ever had given to me is the gift of imagination. I've used it all my life, and I often wonder how many children these days ever use it at all.

I'm so glad Enid Blyton was never banned in my lifetime (or rather, I never knew she was!) because it was her books alone that gave me a love of reading and of writing!

[Moonraker]

That reminds me, when I was eleven I had a reading age of a 15 year old, and I was reading mostly Enid Blyton books at that age.

Nothing much has changed, then!

[Rob Houghton]

Actually, its funny you should say that. Does anyone ever have a better reading age than '15'? I had a reading age of 15 aged 10 or 11 and I don't actually think you can improve much more than that. I've been reading in pretty much the same way since I was 11. How does a 21 year old read, or a 30 year old and how do we tell what the average 40 year old reads like?!

[Eddie Muir]

I found the following interesting information on the internet:

The average reading age of the UK population is 9 years – that is, they have achieved the reading ability normally expected of a 9 year old. The Guardian has a reading age of 14 and the Sun has a reading age of 8.

[Rob Houghton]

So Katherine and I are very advanced, lol!!

[Katharine]

That reminds me, when I was eleven I had a reading age of a 15 year old, and I was reading mostly Enid Blyton books at that age.

Nothing much has changed, then!

It's probably dropped to about 8 now.

[Rob Houghton]

Depends if you read The Sun, lol...

[Katharine]

Well I certainly don't look at the pictures in it.

[Moonraker]

I was really referring to Katharine still reading Enid Blyton, rather than her reading age.

[Rob Houghton]

I was really referring to Katharine still reading Enid Blyton, rather than her reading age.

hmmm...you can't wriggle out of it that easily!

[Anita Bensoussane]

I read all the Narnia books at school aged 11-12, but found the religious symbolism and the 'bossy' Aslan a bit much!

I agree about the Narnia books - as a child, I didn't see the religious symbolism - but as a teenager and adult I find them a bit obviously preachy in many ways. Still enjoyable, but some of them leave a nasty taste in the mouth! They are just 'too much' as you say...

...I did enjoy a few books we read at A Level - although I found 'The Rainbow' by DH Lawrence laughable to say the least - like he was self-consciously just trying to shock his readers with ridiculous phallic imagery.

C. S. Lewis's Narnia series and D. H. Lawrence's The Rainbow (as well as Sons and Lovers and Women in Love) are some of my favourite books! I find the Narnia books gloriously dreamy and imaginative (especially The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair), while D. H. Lawrence's characters seem very real to me and I also love his deep appreciation of nature and the poetic quality of his writing.

I've never been able to really 'get into' Dickens - largely on account of the length of the chapters and convuluted plots or the supposedly amusing grotesque characters and soap-opera-like melodrama.

Charles Dickens is another favourite for me. Gripping plots, atmospheric descriptions, a huge variety of characters full of heart and humour, social commentary, history and a playful enjoyment of language... I just revel in it!

Reading only a handful of authors should be enough for children to gain reading fluency - as long as they read very regularly. However, if reading is to expand children's horizons and get them thinking about all sorts of things outside their own experience, exposure to a wider variety of authors may be better. Of course, Enid Blyton is something of an exception to the rule as she wrote so many different kinds of books for children of varying ages - fairy tales and fantasy, animal stories, cautionary tales, school stories, adventures and mysteries, tales about life in a circus or on a farm, family stories... I read her books repeatedly as a child and learnt a lot from them, though I always read books by other writers too.

Regarding reading tests, I remember that we had the same reading test at school three years running when I was about 7 or 8 - 10. We were called out individually and had to read a long list of words to the teacher. The words got progressively harder and I recall that the final one was "idiosyncrasy".

[Rob Houghton]

You all have great memories! I don't actually remember taking the reading age test, although I must have done so, as I remember quite clearly the teacher telling my parents I had a reading age of 14 and 15 - probably at different stages so I probably did the test more than once.

I really didn't read many books that weren't Enid Blyton - the main novels I remember reading before I was a teenager were by E Nesbit - The Enchanted Castle in particular. Apart from that my diet was strictly Enid Blyton and comics and annuals - typical boy, I guess!!

I also remember filling in a survey at school asking what our favourite writers were. My top choice, of course, was Enid Blyton. I think we had to put our top three or four (or maybe more) in order of preference - and I recall putting 'Roald Dahl as my second favourite...even though I had only read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at that point! So maybe that survey wasn't very accurate! However I have read about it since, as it was a major survey - and Enid came out as the most popular children's author.

[timv]

I do like the atmosphere and imaginative storylines in most of the C S Lewis books, while preferring the 'more story less religion ones' - which excludes 'The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe' and especially 'The Last Battle'. 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader' and 'The Silver Chair' were two of my favourites; I didn't mind the Arthurian symbolism and 'quest' motifs. The film of the first of these two books was also good if a bit too derivative of the Peter Jackson Tolkien films. I also liked the 'talking animals' living in secret' part of the story in 'Prince Caspian' and as an Edith Nesbit fan liked the Late Victorian atmosphere of 'The Magicians Nephew' ; my overall favourite was 'The Horse and His Boy' which is often marginalised in the series. We once did a dramatisation of 'Silver Chair' at school.

Comparing Lewis or Tolkien to Enid is difficult as they wrote at completely different ends of the spectrum, though all in the 1940s with the War in the background. But I think Enid was able to create a believable 'parallel world' narrative, albeit for younger readers, when she mixed up real children and other, imaginary beings - influenced by pre-1914 'fairy world' creations (George Macdonald, Arthur Rackham, Arthur Mee?). Enid could also do the CSL idea of suddenly transferring her characters to a different geographical location with its own sense of atmosphere (but a 'real world' one, reached by air not magic) in the Adventure series - Valley and Circus in post-War Central / Eastern Europe.

[pete9012S]

I remember taking the reading test in junior school when I was in the year below the top.
My headmaster came in to take the test with our class, was pleased with my results and told my teacher my 'reading age' was 14.6 or thereabouts.

Instead of being pleased, my teacher was quite dismissive and told the headmaster my score was 'only so high because he reads lots and lots of Enid Blyton's'....

I wasn't quite sure what to make of that,but just stuck my head back down into Five Go To Mystery Moor.