References to certain subjects appearing in children’s books for children, such as weight, mental health or racial questions, will be modified.
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This is a revision that makes teeth cringe across the Channel. The new editions of the books of the British author for children Roald Dahl will be modified, with the aim of removing the vocabulary which would risk being considered offensive.
References to weight, mental health, violence, or racial or gender issues have been expounded and rewritten: these are the sensitive themes that would have been targeted, according to the daily Conservative Daily Telegraph .
Thus, the term “big” is no longer used to describe Augustis Gloop de Charlie and the chocolate factory. James’ “cloud men” and giant fishing become the “cloud people”. Changes “reduced and carefully thought out”, assures a spokesperson for the Roald Dahl Story Company.
of “absurd censorship”
“Roald Dahl was not an angel,” reacted British writer Salman Rushdie on Twitter, icon of freedom of expression victim of a violent attack six months ago, “it is absurd censorship “. Pen America’s owner, Suzanne Nossel, an organization bringing together 7,000 writers for freedom of expression, judged that “selective edition to make the words of literature comply with particular sensitivities could represent a new dangerous weapon” . The deputy editor -in -chief of the conservative newspaper Sunday Times, Laura Hackett, said that she would keep her original editions of Roald Dahl, so that her children can “appreciate them in all their nasty and colorful glory”.
For British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, the words must be “preserved” rather than “retouched”, said his spokesperson on a regular press point on Monday. “If Dahl offends us, let’s not reprint it,” reacted the writer Philip Pullman on Monday on the BBC, who stresses that millions of his original books would remain in circulation for many years regardless of the changes made in New editions.
Keep the story, the characters and the spirit of the original text
“During new books of books written years ago, it is not unusual to review the language used and update other elements such as cover and layout” Affirmed the spokesperson for the Roald Dahl Company, stressing the desire to keep history, characters, and “the irreverence and the sharp mind of the original text”. The Roald Dahl Story Company also said that she worked with inclusive Minds, a collective that campaigns for the inclusion and accessibility of children’s literature. The review was launched in 2020 before the acquisition in 2021 by Netflix of the catalog of the author for children.
Roald Dahl, an essential author in the libraries of many children, died in 1990 at the age of 74. At the end of 2020, his family had apologized for the anti -Semitic remarks made by the author forty years ago. The creator of Matilda or the good big giant had notably made openly anti -Semitic statements in an interview with the British magazine New Statesman in 1983, legitimizing anti -Semitism and seeming to find justifications to the crimes of Hitler.