Target age group for series like Famous Five, MT etc

[auscatherine]

I have been pondering the question of what age group series like the Famous Five, Malory Towers etc were originally targeted at. On one hand the protagonists are teenagers but I know that I, like most of my peers, read and enjoyed these series well before teenagehood (and had largely moved onto other authors by the time we reached the age of the protagonists in these books). I wondered if this was simply because we were reading these books in a different time to which they were written and whether these books actually were more popular amongst older/teenage readers at the time they were written.

Correct me if I am wrong but I am not even sure that there was such a concept as "young adult fiction" at the time that Enid Blyton was writing. In fact I can't even remember there being a "young adult" section in the library when I was a child/teenager in the 70s and 80s, ie, fiction for non-adults was just divided into picture books and non-picture books (for want of a better term).

On a related note, I actually find all these "categories" for fiction quite limiting, ie, in the last few years I have discovered a whole world of fantastic books and authors by venturing into the young adult section of the library (which I only did because I was doing my high school English teaching course). So many adult readers are missing out on these books because of how they are labelled.

I wonder if the Famous Five were transplanted into a more modern setting and published today what "label" they would attract?

Anyway, sorry if this is a bit of a rambling post! Interested in what others have to say on any of these issues.

[Aurélien]

Keep up the 'rambling', Catherine, 'cos I for one enjoy the golden nuggets that may be found therein.

I agree with you that age-coding books, whether for commercial or for other reasons, can indeed be a nuisance. Especially in the science-fiction and fantasy genres, I've picked up some great 'young adult' reads that my local libraries were shedding.

When one of EB's series was carried on for longer than she may have originally intended (eg the Famous Five books) the apparent ages of the characters could diverge from the likely target audience. As someone recently remarked on one of the boards here, that series more-or-less evolved into a situation where pre-teens were reading about teenagers.

‘Aurélien Arkadiusz’

[Rob Houghton]

At the back of 'The Story of My life' written by Enid in 1952, Enid includes a list of all of her books (up to that date) and includes the age-range they are intended for (though she does say in her introduction: 'Of course, some boys and girls will still enjoy '1' books when they are fast growing up while others who are really in group '2' will read the 'teenagers books with delight.')

She numbers the books with a '1', '2', or '3', suggesting '1' as being 'for very young children' '2' as being for 'the 7 to 11's' and '3' as being 'older children'.

Some books in number '1' section include Noddy, Adventures of Pip, Mary mouse etc.

'2' includes books such as school stories, Mystery (Fatty) books, Faraway tree books, family stories, Adventure books, the 'Secret' books and 'Secret seven' and 'Five's' books.

'3' overlaps with the '2's', including again the Five's books, Fatty books, Adventure books and school stories and family stories. The only books she considered solely for 'older children' are the 'Barney Mystery books'.

So to sum up, Enid herself considered the majority of her books to be within the 'seven to eleven' age group, with books as far apart in style and difficulty as Noddy, Faraway Tree and Malory Towers and Fatty Mysteries all making it into this section!!

[Aurélien]

Thanks, Robert. Do you know if this data is accessible on-line somewhere?

‘Aurélien Arkadiusz’

[Rob Houghton]

Thanks, Robert. Do you know if this data is accessible on-line somewhere?

‘Aurélien Arkadiusz’

Not as far as I know

By the way, I've since realised that the book listing and introduction I quoted above were actually the publishers rather than Enid's, but I'm sure it was done with her imput over the intended ages (I'm sure she wouldnt have had such a list included without putting forth her own ideas about suitable ages! ) and even so the ages were contemporary with 1952 age-range ideas.

[auscatherine]

That's really interesting, Robert, and thanks also for your comments, Aurelien.

[Seymour Glass]

I've always seen series' such as The Famous Five, et al, as generally being most suitable for children between 8 and 12. I myself was reading the Famous Five books at the age of six, which is probably quite early, but once I picked up reading, there was no turning back. I was a strong reader as a child. It was at the age of nine that I started drifting away a bit from Enid Blyton (I got hooked on C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia instead - whilst also reading Goosebumps on the side.)

[Enikyoga]

Gareth, that was very fast of you to read The Famous Five at the age of 6. Oftentimes, people at
that age are supposed to be reading Noddy. You were drifting away from The Famous Five at 9?
Wow, at that age I hadn’t even heard about The Famous Five, let alone Enid Blyton. It would be
two or three years before I would learn about Enid Blyton, that is at the ripe age of around 11 or
12 (at least by Gareth’s standards).

Hodder Children’s Books (the official publishers of The Famous Five, Secret Seven etc-then
published under Hodder & Stoughton slogan), suggest that The Famous Five ought to be between
7-9 (http://www.hodderchildrens.co.uk/Books_ ... _Years.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). In an interview with Enid
Blyton in 1962 by Adam Sykes (Adam Sykes, “The Books That Children Love [an interview
with Enid Blyton],” Time & Tide (November 22-29), 21-23), Enid stated at which age ranges she
expected her child audiences to read particular sets of her books. It was more less a rehash of
what she had stated 10 years earlier in her autobiography, The Story Of My Life, about this issue.

[Seymour Glass]

Gareth, that was very fast of you to read The Famous Five at the age of 6. Oftentimes, people at that age are supposed to be reading Noddy. You were drifting away from The Famous Five at 9?
Wow, at that age I hadn’t even heard about The Famous Five, let alone Enid Blyton. It would be
two or three years before I would learn about Enid Blyton, that is at the ripe age of around 11 or
12 (at least by Gareth’s standards).

Thank you Enikyoga. I was just one of those kids who picked up reading very fast and became very good at it in a short space of time. If only my mind had worked so fast with certain other things! I have a clear memory of sitting in front of the TV when I was six or seven and my mother coming in with three Famous Five books that she'd picked up at a charity shop for me. A lovely little treat!

By the way, I may be getting a username change, so don't get too used to my current one.

[auscatherine]

I remember a girl in our street reading the first Harry Potter book at the age of 5 or 6 (this girl was/is very bright, ie, she is now on an academic scholarship at a very exclusive private school). The problem with the Harry Potter books though, compared to Famous Five, is that while they may be easy to read, the content is not always suitable for younger readers, especially in the later books.

[Seymour Glass]

The problem with the Harry Potter books though, compared to Famous Five, is that while they may be easy to read, the content is not always suitable for younger readers, especially in the later books.

That's true but I think that the first couple of Harry Potter books were generally suitable for young readers. The third one may have been a bit questionable for children as young as five or six - I think it's more from the fourth book onwards that the content starts to surpass what might be suitable for smaller children.