Famous Five sensitivity cuts take our kids for fools

A collection of Famous Five books by children's author Enid Blyton.

I’ve got a problem with Enid Blyton. Every time my children and I listen to her Famous Five stories as audiobooks in the car, my hackles go up about one issue in particular.

It’s Anne. What an epic drip she is. Why is Anne always the one cutting up the currant cake, or pouring everyone an icy-cold glass of ginger beer, or washing up the cups after lashings of cocoa?

Why do Dick, Julian and “tomboy” George get to rappel into disused mine shafts and confront robbers who’ve hidden stolen jewels in a tree hollow while Anne stays back at the campsite and launders everyone’s pullovers?

Well, we all know why. It’s because Anne was created as a character in 1942, back when little ladies were expected to be helpmeets and handmaidens, neat and tidy, compliant and competent.

Enid Blyton.

So do we stop listening? Do I tweet my outrage at this and demand that publisher Hachette change the books? No. No!

Instead, I make much of my outrage. I groan and fix the kids in my rear-vision mirror gaze, and I say: “You know what I’d say if I were Anne? ‘Get stuffed, Dick. Wash up your own dishes!’ ”

The kids groan back and chortle. “Muuu-uuum!” And that’s today’s lesson: Feminism 101.

Taking my kids back to 1942 is a moment to teach them something about how the world has changed. I tell my daughter how lucky she is to be living today. I tell my son to never forget that girls are just as good as boys – at everything. And we get on with the story.

A couple of days ago a little voice piped up from the back seat. “Hey! They’ve changed this story!”

We were listening to Five Have a Puzzling Time, in which the kids row out to an island to investigate mysterious lights and discover a terrified runaway child who has absconded with his pet monkey and dog because cruel Grandpapa is threatening to have the dog put down.

Right at the beginning of the story, Anne is supposed to tell George “Don’t be an ass!” when George suggests getting her rowboat out in the middle of the night.

That line – which was in the audiobook last time we had listened – was suddenly gone. And that wasn’t it. “Shut up” and “Don’t be an idiot” also had suddenly been cut from this audiobook – which I had paid for and downloaded – without the slightest notice, consultation or even announcement.

Just a month after Puffin embarrassed itself by trying to censor Roald Dahl, I couldn’t believe the same thing was happening to Blyton. If these words were OK for kids in the 1940s, why not the kids of 2023?

Roald Dahl: Tales of the Unexpected.

I rewound and listened again. I found the original audio. I got the original book to check I wasn’t imagining things. I contacted audiobook distributor Audible and publisher Hachette UK. Audible said it was nothing to do with them. Hachette UK didn’t respond.

Someone at Hachette has decided – without having the guts to actually announce this – that they know better than Blyton, better than parents, better than kids. But what more engaging, what more magical tool to teach children history could there be than books?

In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, my kids experience a description of grinding poverty – the first time this concept has come across their happy little minds.

Charlie’s father loses his job and must support four elderly grandparents, plus Charlie and his mum, by shovelling snow while forgoing his own meals to ensure everyone else is fed. “Slowly but surely, everybody in the house began to starve.”

In Five Have a Puzzling Time they meet a child whose loneliness and fear manifest in risking his own life to save his dog.

The classic children’s books work for a reason – because the fairydust surrounds a core of truth.

Kids are up for the challenge. They want to know about the world. They are smarter and wiser than we might think.

Claire Harvey is The Australian’s editorial director.