Decolonising Enid Blyton: Writing a post-colonial Enid Blyton mystery novel

In spite of her elitism, sexism, racism, xenophobia, her abrasive personal life, and her bland, colourless, formulaic writing, Enid Blyton remains one of the best-selling children’s writers of all time and still continues to enchant children of all ages. Fifty years after her death, there has been an upsurge of interest in her writing, calling to attention the narrative complexity of her plots, characters and richly imaginative themes that outlive the personal, socio-political context in which the books were written. In this paper I outline a practice I have coined the ‘Enid Blyton method’, which frames Blyton as an oral storyteller whose writing has been underestimated in terms of its narrative complexity, and which repositions her as a writer who views the world from a child perspective, gives children agency and, like the Pied Piper, lures children into a prelapsarian ‘Neverland’ where adults are banished. This paper also documents how, using this method, I have written a post-colonial Middle Grade mystery for an African readership where I attempted to decolonise the Eurocentric elitism, sexism, racism and xenophobia associated with her writing.