It feels as if there's a lot of lamentation from certain corners of the press in recent years about children growing up too fast. They cite little girls' fashion and their stationery receptacles as examples of a culture which is pushing the sexualisation of kids. So I imagine they get a small feeling of comfort to hear this week's news: the Famous Five are to return to television.
How much more sexless and uncomplicated can it get than the Famous Five? The books hark back to a time when children played outside and wandered the Cornish countryside and waterways without the twin spectres of "elf 'n safety" and adult supervision, worried only about scrapes with the odd shadowy smuggler. A halcyon time. Of course, the telly company couldn't resist tampering with the formula a little: in this 2012 version, George will be a time traveller who gets transported with her dog back to Kirrin Bay in 1954.
I first read my first Famous Five book in primary school, and could not put it down. The various antics of Julian, Dick and Anne, George and Timmy the do-o-og (as the original 1970s television show theme tune had it) were, for a time, as familiar to me as my own "adventures". My school holidays sadly never involved kidnapping or treasure finding (well, maybe at Eid), and no one in my family was hilariously named Dick or Fanny (laughter was easy to come by, then). But like George, I spent my holidays in the company of my cousins and siblings, and together we made our own fun. It took only the mildest of stretches of the imagination to cast the Five in our own image.
Years ago, I worked as a children's bookseller, and I made it my duty to press at least one of the quintet's escapades into the hands of parents and caregivers when they sought recommendations (and in case you're wondering, my all-time favourite remains Five Run Away Together). My sales technique was unimpeachable, but even more persuasive was the nostalgia the books evoke. They still manage to sell in the millions across the world, even though the last of the series was penned back in 1963 (my everyday lexicon does not include "blow!" and "golly!" as expressions of exasperation and surprise, but it remains a small hurdle to clear – language evolves and we all understand that).
Sure, the stories show their age and betray the biases of their creator: witness the introduction of the "traveller" character, which manages to collect a number of racist stereotypes in less than 50 words: "The man ... slouched as he came, and dragged one foot. He had a straggly moustache and mean, clever little eyes that raked the beach up and down". This is followed by "an unpleasant, unwashed kind of smell at once came to the children's noses. Pooh!" And what about this observation from Dick, after an altercation with Jo: "He thought her a bad, cold-blooded, savage little monkey, but he pitied her, and admired her unwillingly for her courage." Even as a child, I noted the tone of prejudice in Blyton's words, and I recoiled from it. But children are a lot smarter than they are often given credit for: they understand nuance and are critical of what they consume.
Last spring, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave the Commonwealth Lecture at the Guildhall. She mentioned the common thread she'd noticed among her fellow international students while at university in the US: "We did have something in common, something that the students from China or even Senegal did not … It was not simply because our countries had been colonised by the British, but because we had, from childhood, read British books. We read Charles Dickens and Enid Blyton, we read of cucumber sandwiches and ginger beer, and our imaginations were bound in a common familiarity". That is why I'm excited by the thought of a new series extending a measure of that comforting familiarity to a new cohort of fans in 2013.
