Modern editions.

[Machupicchu14]

I only have one edition of the Famous Five in French. The thing is, it doesn't has Enid Blyton's books signature! It's said it's done by that French woman, but has the same plot as Five have a mystery to solve!!
How is that??

[Rob Houghton]

I don't have many Rfrench Famous Five editions, but they do have some nice colour illustrations in them. I am sorry you don't like the depiction of Dagobert, Rob!

I forgot he was called Dagobert!

I do like the illustrator. I wonder why she made Dagobert so strange looking though!



The colours, in particular - are brilliant in these illustrations!

[Wolfgang]

Well, María Esther, you can check out here https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Club_des_cinq if you have a Voilier or a Blyton book .

[pebe]

I only have one edition of the Famous Five in French. The thing is, it doesn't has Enid Blyton's books signature!

Maybe a book of Claude Voilier? In France, Hachette has released the 21 FF of Blyton and a sequel of 24 "Les Cinq" by Claude Voilier. It's not very good! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Voilier" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Below is the DJ of Le club des cinq joue et gagne. Yes, Timmy is strange !

[Wolfgang]

In the file section of the Enid Blyton yahoo group you'll find an English translation of "Les Cinq et le diamant bleu/Les Cinq et le rubis d'Akbar.

[Machupicchu14]

Thanks! For making things clear!

[Paul Austin]

Moved from another topic.

copying this person's post from another board:

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You do understand that name changes were done to make the books more accessible to the target market? Jill and Mary are not currently fashionable names and with a finicky market, these changes make sense.

The change from pre-decimal currency which was confusing even for those of us who grew up with it is a sensible choice as well. If you want the child to access the story (and none of the storylines were changed) taking out extraneous content is a reasonable editorial decision.

Hodder would not have done this without serious consultation with industry experts--their goal was to make money out of the next generation of readers by making the books more accessible and less offensive.

Do you have much background in kidslit or are you an annoyed consumer?
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[Anita Bensoussane]

copying this person's post from another board:

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You do understand that name changes were done to make the books more accessible to the target market? Jill and Mary are not currently fashionable names and with a finicky market, these changes make sense.

The changes don't make sense to me! When I was a child, some of my favourite book characters had names like Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Pinocchio, Arrietty (Mary Norton's The Borrowers), Oswald and Cyril (E. Nesbit), Posy and Petrova and Santa (Noel Streatfeild) - not to mention Darrell, Peggy, Nora, Lotta and Melisande! I didn't know anyone with those names in real life but I could cope with them perfectly well when I came across them in stories. Why shouldn't today's children be able to do the same? After all, they meet names like Katniss and Peeta in the Hunger Games books!

Besides, the events of The Adventurous Four quite clearly take place during the Second World War!

Currency updates aren't sensible either because inflation and changes to notes and coins mean that the updates are themselves soon out of date.

[KEVP]

I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about this. On the one hand, the "target market" for Blyton when she was alive was young children who were still developing their reading skills. So a publisher might have to change some of the archaisms (like pre-decimal currency) so that the books can be read by modern children who are developing reading skills.
But my stronger feelings are that people shouldn't mess with an artist's work. Also, I have been interested in history from a very young age, so that when I was a child, I would expect to learn something about history when I read an "old" book. Having children use pre-decimal currency in a story can teach modern children something about history. So maybe since Blyton is now a "classic" author instead of a "contemporary" one, we should consider the target market to be different.
I remember when American fans of J.K.Rowling discovered there were differences in the American versions of her books and the British versions, they started seeking out the original British versions. (The first book "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", was published in the USA as "Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, for example)
I don't see why we need to change ordinary names like "Jill" or "Mary". They are still names in use, even if they are no longer very common. And the fashion in names for baby girls changes VERY rapidly!

[Rob Houghton]

I agree I see no reason for the changes in character names at all - as KEVP says, the popularity (or otherwise) of these names changes very rapidly. I think the names Jill and Mary were changed to Pippa and Zoe in the mid 1990s - though I'm not sure...and yet I know a 'Mary' who was born in 1992 - so there's one girl of that generation called 'Mary' that I know of! I'm sure there are many more!

The change to decimalised currency is more awkward. I agree, keeping the pre decimalisation currency is preferable...but I can also see why it was altered. Trouble is, as Anita rightly says, it must be altered every couple of years once a publisher has decided to alter it! I'm not sure what the monetary value is these days in The Naughtiest Girl books, for example, but it became a bit bizarre to read that the children were having to survive on a 20p weekly allowance and that with it Elizabeth was able to buy such things as a birthday card, cake, present, or a classical music record (has this now become a CD?!)

[Paul Austin]

Here's their response to my asking do they really feel that removing the spankings and whippings and cigarettes,pipes and cigars etc doesn't change the characters and thus the plot:
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Yes. The storyline is preserved but the details are changed. None of those changes affect the plot.
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[Courtenay]

and that with it Elizabeth was able to buy such things as a birthday card, cake, present, or a classical music record (has this now become a CD?!)

No, it's now an iTunes gift card.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Here's their response...
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The storyline is preserved but the details are changed. None of those changes affect the plot.
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Trouble is, there's much more to a book than just the plot.

[Rob Houghton]

In a way I disagree with the statement that none of the modern changes affect the plot, particularly regarding Dame Slap. Changing her to 'Dame Snap' does indeed change the plot. The threat of Dame Slap was the plot! Also, removing any corporal punishment from the Faraway Tree books must also have necessitated the removal/change to Saucepan Man's poem 'Two spankings for Bessie' etc (can't remember which book this was in, but obviously the rhyme must have changed!).

I would much rather the publishers had taken Dame Slap out altogether. She becomes a pointless character when she's just 'Dame Snap' so the books would definitely be better without her character or her school featuring at all, in my opinion.

[joanne_chan]

I see both sides of the revision argument but in the end I come down to feeling that at least with 'hardbacks' for bookstores they need to be full original text simply because as I found quite by accident yesterday even the relatively minor changes such as removal of threats of getting a whipping make a significant difference to the atmosphere in which the characters live and breath even if the basic plot remains the same. It transformed me to the world in which I read them where even in that era such expressions and threats were known so you felt more for the characters. You cannot replace a whipping with strong scolding because at an emotional level your reactions were different at the point of the adult figure threatening it.
Equally it wasn't and in some parts of the Midlands amongst the older generation it is still common place to remark on a person being 'black' not because they have an issue with it so much as it an exception in their world in much the same way that speaking with a non British accent like mine is likely to result in being referenced when I'm talked about but with no malice. And that's the thing with words, your intent adds and makes the difference to their impact they make so when Enid referenced their colour she sure didn't mean anything bad by it.
When it comes to paperback editions aimed more at children and especially the education market some terms would need to be changed 'nigger' being an obvious one and some of the more repeated references to being black reduced (once we know the race of the character, that's enough).
I feel the currency simply has to remain because you can't satisfactory replace it without losing track of its value which is important in a number of the stories that are in any event set in a time period before today's children were born and so I'd also leave any references to spanking in.
They read the stories for the timeless elements of being young and the adventures rather more the extent the the social setting depicted matches exactly their own in much the same way some of us read say Tom Brown's Schooldays or Jennings even though our era sure wasn't theirs!
The existence of minor revision editions for that audience is something I can leave with - one has to be a realist - so long that the original is still made available for collectors for which there does appear to be a market for given the number of special editions that appeal to usually older collectors of books and other media