Reading between the lines of joyless self-importance

Arguments about preserving the tender buds of young minds do not stack up, writes Gemma Tognini.

I was never into Enid Blyton as a kid. Nothing against the Famous Five. Who doesn’t love lashings of ginger beer, not to mention a border collie? I just found it all a bit twee. My favourite heroine from the books of my childhood was Norah Linton, a chatty, primary school-aged tomboy who lived on a cattle station called Billabong in regional NSW.

Norah spent her days riding her pony, getting into all manner of scrapes, then using her common sense and pluck to emerge triumphant and mostly unscarred. She also had a border collie and some chooks, and lived the life of my primary school dreams.

Written by Australian author Mary Grant Bruce, the Billabong series is wholesomeness personified. It’s so wholesome it makes Bluey look like Breaking Bad. But her books are also a reflection of the early 1900s, when they were published. They contain characters and themes that a sound mind today can recognise and place in the appropriate context. This is reality.

This past week, the publishing world showed again just how disconnected it is from this reality, exposed as having gone after Blyton’s Famous Five, unleashing the sensitivity readers to go after the apparently problematic dialogue of Julian, Dick, George and Anne (and Timmy the Dog). Phrases that have been removed include “Don’t be an idiot”, “shut up” and the crude and wildly explicit “don’t be an ass”.

The publisher has defended itself by claiming it is working to ensure there are no offensive terms in the books. That the phrase “don’t be an idiot” should be seen as offensive is in and of itself highly offensive. In the sense that it represents the slow, deliberate, cowardly dumbing down of intellect and inquiring minds.

Apart from my personal view that more people should be counselled with a firm “don’t be an ass”, may I ask if anyone involved in this decision has met, spoken to or interacted with an actual human tweenager lately? Would that they did use this kind of language! Lord knows it would be a solid step up from the vernacular of primary school playgrounds in 2023.

This is the online generation; the generation of streaming, Snapchat and TikTok. These kids, yes, even the young ones, listen to Lizzo, the lyrical master who gave us lines such as “cause I give a f..k way too much, Imma need like two shots in my cup”, and Cardi B, whose work, try as I might, I could not bring myself to repeat in these pages. Let loose the sensitivity readers on that gear instead. They’ll need a defib at the ready, I can guarantee it.

My point is, arguments about preserving the tender buds of young minds do not stack up. It’s a nonsense proposition. It’s another example of the joyless, mired-in-misery woke brigade attempting to paint the world and everything in it a lovely shade of beige.

They don’t trust us to interpret things through the prism of history and hold more than one idea in tension because they themselves are incapable. They look for offence where it doesn’t exist and try to gaslight the rest of us who stand up to the charade. They fawn over their own self-importance, fixated on imaginary conflicts the rest of us laugh away.

They purport to intellect. These are the same folk who want to ban books such as To Kill a Mockingbird because of their racist content. I mean, killing irony is one thing, but exposing yourself as a colossal dullard in the process? That takes a special kind of talent.

Back to the Famous (now arguably infamous) Five. May I ask where we draw the line? A cursory audit of some of Australia’s most loved children’s books from that era reveals the peril young minds are in. Blinky Bill? Got to go. Offensive to the visually impaired. The Magic Pudding? Out. Pudding is calorie-dense and will put children at risk of diabetes. The Muddle-Headed Wombat? Gone, lest it offend the neuro-diverse.

If this sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is absolutely ridiculous. As ridiculous as editing the phrase “Don’t be an idiot” out of a kids’ adventure book. Not as ridiculous as the idea of employing a sensitivity reader, let alone being one. Imagine the conversation. Yes mate, please don’t tell my parents I’m a sensitivity reader, they think I’m a piano player in a brothel.

Thankfully, the backlash is strong and growing, and much has come from leading children’s authors. Last month, publisher Puffin was shamed into backing down over its attempt to sanitise the words of Roald Dahl. So, there’s hope sanity is returning.

Back to Bruce’s works. I didn’t grow up believing in segregation based on race, class or anything else because I read those books. I was lost in adventure and the vague hope that one day I’d spend more time on a pony than in the classroom. Revisionism is just deception by another name. Teaching young minds how to read and then understand something in context is a lesson that can be learned only one way. To those seeking to rob them of that lesson, I have one message. Don’t be an ass.