Famous Five – not such jolly adventures any more - Hodder revises Blyton

• PDF
• Printer-friendly version
• Send to friend
• Login or register to bookmark

Hodder Children’s Books, the publishers of the Famous Five books, are launching new editions of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series this summer with “sensitive text revisions and contemporary new covers”.

According to the vice-president of brand management and marketing at Chorion, owners of the Blyton estate, research showed that mums and children felt the language and look of the Famous Five books were no longer relevant. As Hodder report that they are still selling half a million copies of the books a year one has to wonder if their relevance is what matters to readers.

The Five: gently polished for the 21st century

Covers come and go – the books were last given a contemporary new look in 2001– text changes are rarer. The revisions have the full support of Blyton’s granddaughter Sophie Smallwood, who describes the books as having been “gently polished” to make them fit for the 21st century.  Dated expressions and language has been replaced, but text changes focus in particular on the dialogue.

For example, in the original Five on a Treasure Island Anne exclaims, “I’m tired of wearing school tunics.  I want to wear jeans, or a swimming costume, and go swimming and climbing with the boys.”  Now she says, “I’m sick of wearing my school uniform. I want to wear jeans, or a swimming costume, and go swimming and climbing”.

While in the original text Dick says, “She must be jolly lonely all by herself” this has been updated for today’s readers to say, “She must get lonely all by herself.”

Blyton herself felt it was very important for her readers to be able to relate to her characters, especially in dialogue, and, with her sharp understanding of marketing, would presumably have thoroughly approved of the revisions and the raft of marketing activity supporting the launch.  Full details of this including children’s competitions can be found on the new look website www.famousfivebooks.com.

Hodder’s ‘classic’ editions with near original text and Eileen Soper’s illustrations will remain in print.