Controversy surrounds book publisher changing words to be less offensive
Check your bookshelf. You could make copies of some classics that will never be the same. We're talking about Roald Dahl's books, some of the most popular children's books in the world. Anthony Ponce has more on the controversy. Well, other than perhaps Dr. Seuss, what author can you think of that has more children's classics than Roald Dahl? Well, over the weekend, a British news outlet published hundreds of tweaks to the author's original text, removing a language that many might find controversial. Augustus, how does it make you feel to be the first Golden Ticket Finder? Although Roald Dahl himself described Charlie and the Chocolate Factory's Augustus Gloop as, quote, fat, his estates' sensitivity readers have changed that adjective to enormous.
The word ugly is no longer used to describe any character. Oompa, oompa, oompa dee dee. And the oompa-loompas are rewritten as gender-neutral. It goes a weird line, right? Here's a flavor of some of the edits. In James and the Giant Peach, what used to read, Ant Sponge was terrifically fat and tremendously flabby at that, now reads, Ant Sponge was a nasty old brute and deserved to be squashed by the fruit. In Matilda, the original read, she went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad, but now reads, she went to 19th-century estates with Jane Austen. It's one thing if you're editing something with intent of saying like, I bet he intended this, right? It's another thing to look at it and say, all right, we're gonna take the things that make us feel uncomfortable and we're gonna make it so it makes us feel more uncomfortable.
Chicago bookseller Rebecca George says some of the edits, well-intentioned, may actually deprive young readers of learning about how language and standards have changed over time. Maybe that what he wrote would have been an opportunity to have a conversation the way that it stood versus changing it to appease our modern-day standards. On the copyright page of the new versions, there is a note from the publisher which reads, words matter. This book was written many years ago, and so we regularly review the language to ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today. In the loop, Anthony Ponce, Fox 32, Chicago.
chicago, unusual, roald dahl