Tonight I went to this year’s Night Of The Notables in which the Children’s Book Council of Australia(CBCA) announced this year’s long list for the CBCA Awards. It was held in the North Fitzroy library.
It was a pleasant event as always, though a bit shorter than when they were doing it on Zoom. They fed us and I met a friend, George Ivanoff, who is actually making a living out of his writing, something very unusual here.
I think it’s sponsored by Walker Books Australia, so there was a panel with two Walker authors. One was a new picture book author I hadn’t heard of and they only gave us her first name, but the other was an old favourite of mine, Rebecca Lim. Among other things, she wrote the Mercy series, which she mentioned tonight as having done well - and no wonder! Mercy is an angel who was stupid enough to hang out with the angels who led the rebellion in heaven. A small group of other angels are hiding her on Earth, where she bounces from body to body, a la Quantum Leap.
There was also some discussion of the current situation with the editing of the Ronald Dahl books. Rebecca pointed out that it was done years ago to Enid Blyton and nobody made a fuss, or at least nobody who wasn’t around at the time remembers. I do remember and there was some fuss, just not as much as there is about Ronald Dahl. And it was over much more quickly.
Then there was a video of this year’s long listed books in all categories from Older Readers to picture books. It was pretty, but didn’t go for very long and though I too, photos, I really couldn’t make out what was on the list. In the end, I had to go to the CBCA web site to find out, and there was no link to anything that could tell you what the books were about, but there were some of my favourites on the list, such as Pamela Rushby, who writes very good historical fiction, and Ellie Marney, who did a series about a young Australian Sherlock Holmes type boy and his Watson, a girl called Rachel.
I don’t think I will be able to catch up with anywhere near all of them, but will buy some of those that look interesting.
If you’re curious, here is a link to the long list.
5 comments:
I think the big difference between Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl is social media. When they did that to Enid Blyton books I was horrified, but what could I do about it? But with social media (ie now with Roald Dahl) something like that can trend on twitter etc and it gets seen, hits mainstream media in a bigger way etc. I think if social media had been around back then, something similar would have happened.
Yes, it would certainly have been much discussed on social media. Very true! But we did know about it from MSM and it was discussed quite a lot, if not on social media. The point being made by Rebecca Lim was that it was more accepted. I personally thought Enid Blyton’s books to be racist, sexist and classist and, as a child, I HATED characters like Julian in the Famous Five books. But I did think the reasons for changing the Faraway Tree books were a bit silly.
I managed to get through about one and a half of the Dr Dolittle books, which really WERE racist. As far as I know they are still in print. If they have been revamped I haven’t heard of it.
I think changing Dick and Fanny's names wasn't needed, and what was wrong with Noddy and Big Ears sharing a bed? There was a lot wrong with the changes they made...and pretty much all older books have some form of bigotry in them - that was a sign of the times and it teaches us as much about that time period as anything. The thing about kids books is that for the most part, a lot of this just washes over kids anyway. I certainly never became racist (etc) from devouring Enid Blyton's books over and over.
I read Enid Blyton too, and also didn’t become racist or homophobic because of it, but if you are affected by it, it may be different. If you were black and reading Dr Dolittle you might just notice that there is an African character who is a complete and total idiot, and that the N word is used and it’s no use telling a child that this is just what they did in those days if the only character who looks like them is shown as stupid. But unlike the Dahl books, which only had a few changed words and phrases, you can’t revamp Dr Dolittle, because the character turns up first in Africa and is a main character in the next book. I do read Agatha Christie, despite the antisemitism, because I know she changed her mind, but it does irritate me when she has a character say, “He’s Jewish, but he’s quite nice.” And I’m an adult, who does know about the casual antisemitism of the British upper crust in the 1930s.
I guess I equate it to being female and the way women were portrayed in enid Blyton (the girls had to clean and cook and the boys didn't), but I understood that was just the times. I sometimes get frustrated that we have to pretend things were different back then. No, I don't like the racism, anti-semitism, mysoginistic or whatever anti-social behaviour was considered okay back then, and yes, it annoys me when I read it, but it shows how society has grown, helps to understand why things happened historically etc. It also shows that change is possible!
Post a Comment