Having been an Enid Blyton's "Famous Five" addict (Julian, Dick, George, Ann and Timmy the dog) as a child, I offered them to my children in the 1970s. The only change in the books that I could see was that as England was now using decimal currency, any time money was mentioned it had been changed to its decimal equivalent.
Not a well thought through idea. Even my children at six or seven years old could see the flaw in the idea. The conversations would go along the lines of - "Mum, where can we go to get all these sandwiches and cakes for two-and-a-half-p?" "You couldn't get that anywhere now. Don't forget those books were written a very long time ago, before I was born. Things cost lot more now." "But Mum, when you were a little girl you had that other sort of money........" So we would end up having a discussion that two-and-a-half-p was actually an old sixpence, and that what I could buy for an old sixpence when I was their age was three sherbet fountains, or two Milky Ways (or whatever other unit of currency they would understand and relate to), whereas now it was more than that in new pennies to buy one of them. It would have been much easier if the publishers had either left well alone (so I only had one conversion to deal with) or made an allowance for inflation. Jacquie whose introduction to a lot of books was big sis Malvary reading to me. It's one reason I learnt to read early, because every time the plot got interesting she would get bored with reading out loud so she could find out sooner what was going to happen. The only defense I had was to read it myself. To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
