Publishers have painstakingly scrubbed the latest British editions of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s stories to prevent language readers might find offensive, The Telegraph reported on Friday.
“Hold on to your old children’s books, everyone! Dr. Seuss was just the beginning,” Wall Street Journal book critic Meghan Cox Gurdon tweeted Saturday afternoon.
Gurdon, who wrote “The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction,” was responding to The Telegraph piece detailing a long list of changes to the 2022 Puffin editions of many of the works of Dahl.
Dahl’s work includes Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, The Witches, The Twits, The BFG, Fantastic Mr. Fox and more . They are classics of children’s literature by one of the world’s greatest storytellers.
“Dahl is just one prominent example of a growing trend in children’s editing of content that no one may find offensive,” Ed Cumming, Genevieve Holl-Allen and Benedict Smith wrote in Friday’s well-researched article.
The authors documented literally hundreds of changes to Dahl’s books. These changes make the classic tales no longer uniquely Dahl’s, some would argue. Rather, they have become Dahl-esque narratives that substitute their editors’ “contemporary sensibilities” for Dahl’s own.
Those contemporary sensibilities, in Dahl’s case, meant changes in language around “weight, mental health, violence, gender and race.” Some passages have been rewritten to such an extent that they alter what Dahl clearly wanted to convey.
For example, a mention of Rudyard Kipling has been changed to Jane Austen in “Matilda”. In “The Witches” a passage that once read “‘Here’s your boy,’ he said. ‘He must go on a diet’.” Now it just says “Here’s your boy.”
The illustrations that accompanied Dahl’s work were also subjected to the sensibilities of readers. Sketches of the character Mike Teavee from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” previously included toy guns hanging from his belts. In today’s version, simulated firearms are no longer included in the illustrations, or in the text, The Telegraph noted.
Dahl’s greatness in storytelling, of course, does not negate the fact that he made blatantly anti-Semitic comments. This sad and inescapable fact has long been recognized, and his family apologized for it years ago in a short statement that is still available on Dahl’s website.
“The Dahl family and the Roald Dahl Story Company deeply apologize for the lasting and understandable pain caused by Roald Dahl’s anti-Semitic remarks. Such prejudiced comments are incomprehensible to us and a stark contrast to the man we knew and the values at the heart of Roald Dahl’s stories, which have positively impacted young people for generations,” said the family’s 2020 statement issued 30 years after Dahl’s death.
“We hope that, as he did at his best, at his worst, Roald Dahl can help remind us of the lasting impact of words,” the statement concluded.
Although some of the contemporary editions of Dahl’s work addressed hateful anti-Semitism, many of the changes related to other issues. There seems to have been a noticeable emphasis on changing passages that refer to women, for example.
“What’s next: sanitize Mark Twain? Aristotle? A lot of Dahl’s books were written 50-60 years ago,” Lee Wardlaw, a California-based author of 30 books for young readers, told BlazeMedia.
“Let kids read what they want to read today. If they’re struggling with the language, they can stop reading the books … or they can talk about it with their teachers or parents or classmates,” added Wardlaw .
“I’m sure there is a lot of guilt and shame in this family. [Dahl] he was an anti-Semite and although he apologized years later, and so did his family, there is still a stain on his name because of his comments,” Wardlaw concluded.
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