Blyton's three Golliwogs.

This morning, instead of getting straight into some editing work I followed a rabbit down its hole and came across an article about Enid Blyton that paints a rather different picture than the beloved children's scribe she may have made claim of.

Her apparent perchance for using the words: 'Negro, golliwogs' and when feeling extremely colloquial, 'Nigger' has given contemporary publishers a pigs ear of a time trying to update some of her stories.

Those of her most avid fans (and older readers) have be-cried such editing of those offensive terms as interfering with children's literary history. Err, whose history, may I ask? It certainly was not acceptable for me to be called or call anyone else, the 'N' word. And is that really a part of history we want to preserve?

Of course we may argue that modern rappers use of the 'N' word far surpass Blyton's strongest attempts and I feel the same disappointment in them as I do anyone who picks on stereotypes to try and create a character.

When I was writing Ridley's tale I created a Roma person (otherwise known to most of us as, Gypsies) and I fell in the hole of predictable stereotypes. At the time I just wanted to finish the dastardly difficult chapter but then I woke up a couple of months later knowing full well I had written the character completely wrong. Ivy, did not wear shawls and long dresses; she wore jeans, wornout Dunlops and an old hoodie. I'm being serious. This character, Ivy, walked into my head as clear as day in a completely different get up and I felt shamed to the core for her into the 'stereotypical' corner-because Ivy is certainly not 'typical'.

But back to Blyton. Maybe what made me want to blog about her was not even this story of the three golliwogs but rather, 'The Little Black Doll (who wanted to be pink)'. I mean-Eek! I don't think there is any amount of damage control that can rescue that story. However, maybe oddly enough she's right about us wishing we could be something or better yet, someone else. Isn't our popular culture bursting at the seams to tell us we wish we looked like so and so and lived where so and so lived and went to Soho parties with so and so?

Bah- I say.

And to think this all spurned from me thinking about the creepy Children's story my Mum bought me when I was seven- 'The Night the Toys came to life'.