Roald Dahl's Books Censored, words removed: mothers and fathers, ugly, fat and more

Yes you read my blog post title right. Earlier this year "Go get your mothers and fathers" was changed in Roald Dahl's books to "Go get your parents." There is no way to sugar coat the recent censorship of Roald Dahl's children's books. His books have delighted readers worldwide with sales of 300,000,000 books. Titles include "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "Matilda", "James and the Giant Peach" and "The Witches." I have two co-authored books published and it is outrageous to imagine future generations going through my books and making hundreds of changes. We authors put a lot of work into each word and thought in our books. When Dahl wrote "Rudyard Kipling" in one of his children's books, that is meaningful. It is doubly outrageous to do that after an author's death.

 

Puffin Books, his publisher, have called in sensitivity readers, i.e. a cute/sly way of saying censors. Thank goodness many public figures including Salman Rushdie and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak are speaking out against the censorship. I read Netflix bought the rights to his books so they are involved in this

This year the publishers made hundreds of censorship changes in Dahl's books, including removing "mothers and fathers" and changing that to "parents", and to describe Augustus Gloop the censors removed the word "fat" and changed it to "enormous."  "Cloud-men" was changed to "Cloud-people" and to describe witches "Old hags" changed to "Old crows".  A mention of Rudyard Kipling was removed and John Steinbeck substituted. What! Thus far the changes are only in the English language versions, the French publisher says they have no plans to make those changes. They did not say they never will, but at least they have no plans to do so.

Salman Rushdie tweeted "Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship. Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed." PM Sunak spoke against the Dahl censorship and said "It is important to preserve works of fiction and to not air brush them."

I imagine that people who approve of this censorship would want all of these offending words removed from ALL children's books, no point in just censoring one author. Replacing Rudyard Kipling with John Steinbeck is tampering with what Dahl wrote and is literary vandalism. I am a librarian, published author and freedom lover so this topic is dear to me. What think ye? 

In sum, keep your hands off my words! And all author's words. 

This and That

 Here are a few bits and bobs from my wide ranging thoughts. It's somewhat of a roller coaster inside my mind folks.

First off, censorship. NO. In a word, NO.

Censors, step away from Dr. Seuss, Step away from Miss Piggy. Step away from Pepe Le Pew. You are damaging freedom of expression. Publishers don't decide to drop books from your publishing house because of possibly offensive content,  that people want to buy. Not only is that self-censorship but it prevents readers from buying the books they may want. I hope dropping certain Dr. Seuss books is not the beginning of a trend of publishers dropping books because the book may offend someone, or may have unpopular ideas.

And Amazon, stop your new censorship of books, by you refusing to carry certain books. You are a mighty and powerful seller of books, you may sell more than half of all books sold worldwide. I didn't look up the numbers but you know it is huge. You may refuse to sell three books today, three hundred books next year and three thousand books the year after, hurting their sales due to your personal likes and dislikes. See, I told you it's a roller coaster. 

I am a freedom fighter in my own way.  Being a librarian and writer words are precious to me. If you do not defend words you don't like then you are not a supporter of freedom of speech.

Above are plum blossoms on my 3 year old Santa Rosa plum tree; they are hanging on even during heavy rain. Hurray. Hoping plums will follow; I had a nice plum crop last year, the birds pecked a lot of them, which is annoying. They are welcome to eat the entire plum, but not to peck and ruin them!

Bounce waits at window when I tell him someone he loves is coming over. The card is from a friend and is a quote from Cicero that says If you have a garden and a library you have all you need. That card suits me to a T, she knows me. Though I would add "if you have family, friends and Jesus" to that list.

"Put on the full armor of God so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness  in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm."  The list of full armor of God is found in Ephesians 6:10-19. 

Priscilla Shirer wrote a wonderful book about this, "The Armor of God." See her photo below, she has written many excellent books and starred in the movie "The War Room." She is a beautiful warrior for Christ and a leader for women.