Enchanted, Magic, and a little dated

I love reading to my little girl. She adores it too. She hangs on to every word and anticipates what is coming. She often has her own ideas of the next adventures and she simply listens intently and absorbs the story, word by word.

Recently we have moved on to chosing books from my childhood, many of you may have also been exposed to Enid Blyton and as such you may know the books I am referring to.

The Enchanted Wood, The Magic Faraway Tree and The Wishing Chair.

The books are fully of fantasy and childhood dreams. Simple and beautiful. The words conjur up images and the books have very few pictures, so the mind just does its own work.

The books I am reading from are actually my old ones, thus they were published in the early seventies. How times have changed.

The words and expressions used in the books are dated and in fact some of the text would guaranteed not be able to be published today.

Here are a few examples,

The main characters are called Dick and Fanny
The pixie in one book is called Chinky
They call each other stupid
The teachers hit the kids when they are naughty
The mothers let them out all day til late at night

Everything is "queer"

They use the word thrice and awful lot
There are golliwogs running around

I do not edit the stories and these little things go unnoticed.  My little one is oblivious to the fact that some things are not really done or said any longer. She just cares about the story and the adventure.
She did ask what a golliwog was though, as we don't have any in the house and her modern books dont mention these friendly little  creatures of the past.

So my reflections are just that times are changing, but a good story is still a good story.