zlacker

>>GavCo+(OP)
Wow. This is so gross. I was a bit put out by the Dr. Seuss controversy a few years back, but at least in those cases, they just stopped printing the books (and, to be fair, the caricatures of various ethnic groups in If I Ran The Zoo are pretty bad).

It feels much more disturbing, though, to just silently update the language in the books to be more in line with modern sensibilities. Dahl was a man of his time, and as a general rule his books have good morals and values exhibited in them. They are perfect children's books, not afraid to dip into a little darkness or to poke fun at the adults who run the world, and that's a huge part of why they've been so successful and universally loved.

The mental attitude and sense of self-superiority it must take to feel comfortable taking the knife to something so well loved is really mind-boggling to me. I am very happy that I bought our collection of Dahl's books before this happened.

>>agentw+em
> Dahl was a man of his time

Everyone is a product of their time. People apparently need to be told this now.

>>2OEH8e+VL
Adults don't, but children might. These books arn't consumed by people who are particularly aware of the cultural context of the ear in which they were written. Things are going to very much taken at face value. A lot of things have changed in the last 60 years.

>>Aflynn+iQ
We gonna edit all books so kids don't take the crazy parts at face value? Swift? Dickens? The Bible? The Torah?

There have been thousands upon thousands upon thousands of children's books written in the last sixty years. Leave the classics the fuck alone, especially when the authors are unable to defend their work.