Famous Five Books Show Original is Best

Hatchette Does U-Turn on Revisions

Language changes over time, social structures adjust, and what was once acceptable becomes not so as we evolve, and this can often be a problem for classic literature. As times change books can at best become outdated, at worse, insensitive and while it’s accepted that adults can understand the time when a book was written, this can be a particular problem for publishers of children’s books.

So when the publishing group, Hatchette bought the rights to the Famous Five books recently, they announced that they would be making ‘sensitive revisions’ to the 21 Famous Five Books. The announcement followed market research that suggested children were no longer engaging with the tales about the child detectives due to their dated language, but now they’ve gone back on the decision after the revised books were poorly received.

In the books changes made included replacing “Tinker” with “traveller”, “Mother and Father” with “Mum and Dad” and “Awful Swotter” becoming “Bookworm”. The revisions also made the language more gender neutral, and Anne was changed to love teddies instead of dolls.

It’s not the first change, an earlier edition removed two words from the books, but it’s the biggest change to the original, ever.

Now, after the update flopped, Hatchette has announced that they are doing away with the revisions, and going back to the original language of the books. A representative announced that readers had shown that the love for The Famous Five goes on, and the revisions are not required.

And he may have a point, after all Blyton remains one of the most popular children’s author, selling half a million copies of her books a year, amassing more than 500m in lifetime sales!