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A I know I said I would be writing about Tarzan of the Apes in last
month's issue, but Tarzan was featured quite heavily in November, so
I'm going back in time to the 1940s for this month's back page
feature... Noddy was born the same year as I was: 1946, but I didn't
really get to know him until the 1960s, when our first son Martin was
born, and then fourteen years further on, when our second son
Christopher was born... and when Samantha was born three years later
still, Noddy still featured large in our lives...
The first book in the Noddy series didn't come my way until around 1968, even though we were born in the same year...
...While
I was working in the Public Library service in Hertfordshire, in
Stevenage Central Library, in 1964, the whole Noddy scandal was
rife in the press, with many public libraries removing all traces of
Enid Blyton from their shelves. This was a seriously stupid and
unnecessary move on the part of those do-gooders who thought that they
would try to deny people the right to read one of the greatest and most
popular authors the world has ever known. There are loads of girls'
school stories by such authors as Angela Brazil and Elinor M Brent-Dyer
whose books featured references to racist names and phrases about black
and Asian people, yet the "powers-that-were" decided to make an example
of Enid Blyton, who was really not in a position to defend herself in
the final years of her life. Noddy stories feature "golliwogs", toys
that are still available to buy in toyshops all over the country - they
are toys, they aren't racist, and were never intended to be racist.
There is nothing contentious in any of the Enid Blyton books I've read,
and I have many of the original 1940s and 1950s editions which haven't
been "doctored" by the do-gooders. The Famous Five books are good,
solid adventure stories, with good people and villains. How the
do-gooders could ever find fault with that I simply do not know; but,
not content with removing Noddy from their shelves, those librarians,
who apparently knew better than us, removed all traces of Enid from
their shelves, denying the public the opportunity to read those
fantastic adventure stories. I deeply regret not discovering Noddy
until we were casting around for books to read to Martin, Chris and
Sammy. We bought long-playing records of Noddy, cassette tapes of
Noddy, and pretty much all of the original stories in book form. I read
them to my children, I made up tunes for the songs and I sang them to
my children at bedtime. Noddy is one of the greatest children's
characters to have ever been created, by one of the world's best
children's authors ever. Enid Blyton books still sell in their millions
and the do-gooders are left with egg on their faces for getting it so
spectacularly wrong. You cannot retrospectively censor authors of
classic literature. Simple as that. Suck it up, do-gooders! You got it
wrong!
Next month in my new series, books that inspired and formed my childhood: THE WHITEOAKS OF JALNA... see you in January!
The
small print: Books
Monthly, now well into its 24th
year on the web,
is published on or slightly before the first day of each month by Paul
Norman. You can contact me here.
If you wish to submit something for publication in the magazine, let me
remind you there is no payment as I don't make any money from this
publication. If you want to send me something to review, contact me via
email at paulenorman1@gmail.com and I'll let you know where to send it.
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