Hi Courtenay, that's what I thought, too. Tony is indeed creating a master piece with his Cave of Books, the most beautiful website I've ever seen in 16 years on the Internet.Courtenay wrote:Ooer... yuck. I'm sorry, but putting modern cartoony art on period literature like Enid Blyton's is just completely wrong (and I know there are many more examples than these that we've seen in recent years). Honestly, what'll they come up with next? Jane Austen illustrated by Quentin Blake??
(None of this is intended as a slur against all your great work in collecting all these covers for the Cave, Tony, don't worry.)
But you are right, this constant modernization of Blyton's text (politically correct) and new illustrations with Blue Jeans, maybe even cell phones (I don't know, just guessing) doesn't leave much from the original EB and her great illustrators. It takes away that certain atmosphere that's so special about EB.
The new covers/dustwrappers make the Mystery series look like books for little children (4 or 5 years). How can a 10 year old be thrilled with these new covers?
The same was going on in Germany way back in the 70's when Bertelsmann worsened the Famous Five. All off a sudden the FF went through a modernization process which changed the text and replaced Soper with Wolfgang Hennecke's ugly illustrations. Fortunately I found the missing Soper editions on hundreds of flea markets that I searched for them (my mom unfortunately gave all my EB books to some relatives 700 km away in Southern Germany when I moved out with 19 and had no chance to take everything with me).
The problem is also that today the illustrators draw in a very different more modern style compared with Tresilian, Soper, Dunlop etc.
There is something to their sketches that is lacking today. Don't know why.
Probably the same as with Disney animation movies. Just compare Cinderella with Arielle, the faces look totally different. I like Cinderella's face much more than Arielle's. For me that's not typical Disney any longer. Maybe I'm old-fashioned.
But I've come to love certain things (call it vintage) and hate it when they change to mediocre replacements. But that's the Zeitgeist.