Tony Summerfield wrote:You are right in saying that Macmillan continued to publish the Blyton Adventure series, but for several years the Secret series went completely out of print and the novelisations were the only available version and as they followed the films they bore no resemblance to the original Blyton versions at all.
About four years ago I came across a library copy of the "novelisation" of
The Secret Island, based on the New Zealand TV adaptation, so I borrowed it just to see how far the story deviated from the original. There are numerous alterations to the plot, one of the most noticeable being that the role of the adult characters has been enlarged so that they keep popping up all through the book - not only the children's father (Thaddeus!) but Uncle Henry and Aunt Harriet, Jack's grandad and various police officers. Oh, and there is a "mad monk" living on the island!
Sadly, all the ingredients that make Blyton's Secret Island so special have been lost and the story has been turned into an "action-packed adventure" to the exclusion of everything else. All the way through, the "novelisation" cuts from one short scene to another and from one set of characters to another, leaving no time for the reader to get to grips with one situation before being confronted with another. In Blyton's original, the story unfolds slowly and the emphasis is on the small community that the children create as they get to know the island, learn how to survive on it and grow to love it. In the modern version, we discover surprisingly little about the island itself and about how the children cope with day to day life there. Excitement comes in the form of the "mad monk" who is said to "haunt" the island. What about the zest for living, the love of nature and the gradual discovery of what the island has to offer? All these things have been sacrificed for the sake of cheap thrills and constant activity.
What comes across most of all in Blyton's book is the children's capacity for joy. They have been through hard times but are full of determination and they revel in their new life on the secret island. By contrast, the characters in the updated version are joyless.
At the time I borrowed the book I noticed that the library stocked several Enid Blyton titles, most of them genuine, giving children the chance to read more-or-less unadulterated Blyton. That is still the case today. Imagine the confusion, though, for children who read the library copy of
The Secret of Spiggy Holes (original text) after reading the library copy of
The Secret Island (TV version). They'll wonder why Laura has become Nora, be astonished that the children's mother has returned from the dead, and notice that the characters suddenly come out with phrases like "I say!" and "Mummy's a brick." When they get to the part where Prince Paul is taken to the Secret Island, they'll be mystified by references to Willow House (which is not in the film version) and wonder why there is no mention of the mad monk!
I'm relieved to hear that the updated versions had such a short shelf-life - let's hope that any remaining library copies will soon be discarded!
Tony Summerfield wrote:The Secret series came back into print when Award took them over, but I have not yet seen them for sale in any bookshop, so they have been badly sidelined and unfortunately the Barney series has suffered the same fate.
It would be good if Award could get these series into the shops. Currently, all the other major Enid Blyton series are readily available in shops like WHSmith and Waterstones.
Kate Mary wrote:The most popular children's authors today are: Daisy Meadows - Rainbow Fairies...
Daisy Meadows? That's never her real name, surely?! (Assuming she's not a syndicate, which is perfectly possible of course.)
Anita
It doesnt seem to have an original idea in it, it has nothing to do with Enid Blyton and it just seems like some usual childrens fantasy thing; rather like a computer game where you have to go around collecting talismans to get to the next level.