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
> These books arn't consumed by people who are particularly aware of the cultural context of the ear in which they were written

Part of reading these books as a child or adolescent is being introduced to the cultural contexts of other times (and perhaps places). When a modern child reads a Victorian children's book, for example, they pick up pretty quickly that it's coming from a different cultural context. And this is a great way to learn about some of the more 'confronting' aspects of other cultural contexts in a pretty non-threatening way (they're just words on a page).