Accused of sexism and racism:

The Enid Blytons we knew in school are no more

Publishers have come under fire for sanitising Enid Blyton's children's classics to make them politically correct.

The author's famous stories have been purged of sexual stereotyping, snobbish and racist allusions and words and phrases deemed unacceptable to modern readers.

Rather than breathlessly exclaiming: "he looks a bit queer!" characters in new editions of the Famous Five and Secret Seven adventures now say "he looks a bit odd".

All descriptions of the girls doing the washing up alone have been rewritten so that the boys help out and do their fair share of the domestic chores.

The expression "horrid common voice", with its implications of class superiority, becomes "horrid mean voice".

In other stories, Dame Slap has been rechristened Dame Snap, who tells off naughty children rather than smacking them.

Other characters to have their names changed include Fanny and Dick in the Far Away Tree stories, who are now Frannie and Rick, while in the Adventurous Four Mary and Jill have become the supposedly more modern sounding Zoe and Pippa.

Altered words and phrases

Words and phrases have been altered in an attempt to appeal to the US market, with "I say" replaced by "hey", and "biscuits" becoming "cookies". Blyton's biographer, Barbara Stoney, attacked the changes as "nonsense." She said: "I just don't see why people can't accept that they were written in a particular period and are a product of that. It's bizarre. People are now very conscious of our 'PC' world, and I think that's what's driving it.

"I just wonder where it will stop. Do we start updating Jane Austen next, or Dickens?"

Tony Summerfield, the founder of the Enid Blyton Society, said: "It's ludicrous. The publishers have underestimated the intelligence of children by assuming they cannot enjoy a story set in the 1940s or earlier.

"Nobody would suggest re-writing the Railway Children to have them sitting on an embankment watching an Inter-City train roaring past, so why do they try to update Blyton?"

Deemed offensive

Blyton, who died in 1968 aged 71, wrote over 700 books and many more short stories which have sold 400 million copies in 40 languages. Malory Towers, St. Claires and Secret Seven series are to be relaunched next year and expected to become bestsellers. But even in her own lifetime some of Blyton's stories were deemed offensive.

In 1960 the publisher Macmillan rejected The Mystery That Never Was for containing an "unattractive touch of old-fashioned xenophobia" as all the thieves in the book were foreign, documents discovered last year revealed. During the 1980s, many of Blyton's stories were banned from libraries and removed from school reading lists amid accusations of sexism and racism.

In an attempt to appease critics, the Noddy books were the first to be revised for modern sensibilities with the intimidating golliwogs removed and replaced with teddy bears. References to Noddy and Big Ears in bed together were also taken out.

Publishers Hodder said the books had only been very slightly altered and remained true to Blyton's intentions.

Courtesy Daily Mail

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Should children's literature be cleaned up?

Reader's comments

"If she was writing today I don't know how Enid Blyton, would get away with a character called Fatty. This didn't bother me when I read her as a kid, but today, as an adult I don't like it all that much." - A fan

If Enid Blyton's books have to be revised, why stop there? Books by Shakespeare, Dickens and a whole lot of other classics would need to be censored and rewritten too. The fact is racist or sexist values depicted in many books simply reflect the times they were written in". - Daphene

"I think that political-correctness should only be taken so far. Growing up, I devoured more Enid Blyton books than actual food, and I never once thought that golliwogs were racist or caught on to the sexual stereotypes that they've been accused of containing.

Golliwogs were just a kind of toy (I have one in fact), and the boys and girls in the stories did their own things without in any way leading me to feel constrained into behaving or acting in a certain way.

It's all a matter of context, something that most adults don't credit children with having at all. I didn't think that gypsies in general were 'dirty', just the one or two gypsies that were in the story at the time.

There's a general tendency among those who would like to see themselves as politically correct, to read too much consequence into singular texts, or in this case, across the board for a single writer. I think that due credit should be given to parents for dialogue and discussion with their children, and for exposing their children to a range of influences, rather than assuming that Enid Blyton (to use the example in this case) will be the singular point of reference for any child.

And I also think that children should be given some credit as well. I know quite a few bright, intelligent ones who have raised excellent points on discrepancies such as portrayal of race.

My point is not that Blyton books are wholly free of subtext, but that they can be read in myriad ways and they shouldn't be censored". - Suzanne

"I was horrified the other day when I heard my friend reading an Enid Blyton book to her daughter. I'm not sure whether updates have included the removal of the comments made about Gypsies, but I hope they have. They are portrayed as dirty and troublesome.

Her daughter may take this view with her into school etc and believe that this is how it is. Gypsy children in school have enough racist views directed at them by parents and sometimes teachers. I realise they were written some time ago but things have moved on and now being recognised as an ethnic group should deserve some respect from literature.

I have researched this on the internet and found reference to gollywogs and sexism but no reference to Gypsies. Hope this has changed". - Lesly