Posted by Roger Wardale on March 29, 2012 at 00:33:47 user RogerW.
In Reply to: Re: Blyton updated posted by Mike Dennis on March 29, 2012 at 23:50:08:
I agree that Blyton's books made an excellent stepping stone to reading, and during the days of their huge popularity did much to raise the standards of children's reading — up to a point. The problem that I found when trying to move them on to more challenging/rewarding books was that once hooked on Blyton, a great many resisted, and as their were so many of Blytons, their reading records contained nothing else. As a result, it was comparatively easy for them to reach a certain reading age and very difficult to get them to progress beyond.
Relating this to Ransome, when I started teaching in 1960, it was easy to persuade the better readers in year 4 (eightish) to read him. Several years before I retired, I all but gave up, and there remained a row of unread Ransomes in my year 6 class library — by then they were rather long and difficult compared with their regular diet of 'readers' and out of fashion!