Censorship or rewriting ?

GagaJo

AGAA4

Do children when they read The Witches say 'this is anti semetic'? I doubt it. My GCs read it and found it fun.
This is adults making choices for children who just think witches are ugly hook nosed people as have been depicted through history.
I don't like people who think they know better making choices for me.

Is your family Jewish? Would you be OK with Jewish children reading it?

It's bizarre, really. Not all Jews have hook noses and not all people with hook noses are Jews. How would a child even connect the two, unless they'd been specifically told about the possible connection? It never occurred to me, and I've had to read the damn book several times because I supported an English teacher for a couple of years who insisted on doing it with all her Y7 groups. (Who didn't really seem to enjoy it very much)

FWIW, I think The Witches is a horrible book; I have read other RD books that pleased me more.

MaizieD have you read my post about The Witches?
Dahl’s antisemitism went beyond his description of noses

And, for what it’s worth, I love RD’s short stories for adults.
I will always be a fan.
I’m able to separate the artist from the art

Dahl was a very clever writer but his antisemitism was abhorrent. I just feel that children probably won't understand unless it is pointed out to them and why would you do that.

Because you grew up and realised that your mum, dad, grandparents and teachers read it to you when you could not make that decision.
Children don’t exist in a vacuum

No. They exist in innocence and so they should. They will also know that their parents would not have read anything they felt was harmful or upsetting.

Me? I think it's appalling. Roald Dahl was who he was, a man of his time. He was a very talented writer of stories both for adults (which is how I encountered him as a teenager, how can you not love Lamb to the Slaughter, the first one I read?) and for children (my daughter loved his books). In many ways he was not a very nice man but that's by the by. If we took away all the creative works produced by deeply unpleasant people (not naming names here) the world would be a much poorer place.

I'm with Philip Pullman, here, as reported from R4 this morning. Rather than bowdlerise Dahl's books, simply let them fade away as new children's authors, more in tune with today's children and their world, emerge.

Iam64

R D wasn’t an entirely pleasant man but he wrote fantastic books for children. Part of the joy of reading at any age, but especially throughout childhood Is being shocked and scared. We took our grandchikdren to Matilda the musical. They’d had the book read more than once, the two 7 year olds were frightened of Mrs Trunchball because she’s cruel to children and puts them in the chokey. Both of them hid their faces at times but had a great time.

What about the witch in Hansel and Gretel? Will she have to be turned into a nice old thing who’s just a bit batty, then?

He was a really unpleasant man. I wonder what the people at the publishing house are like. Do you think none of them are misogynists?

My children loved his books. Reading them didn’t turn them into racist misogynists. I don’t understand so much of so many things that are happening these day.

Apparently, You can no longer be "as white as a sheet" or wear a black cloak, like the BFG. You must say 'enormous' instead of fat. Why are people so sensitive; where has sense of humour gone?

Gagajo on of my close friends is Jewish, we took our children to the cinema to see The Witches…

I'd rather be fat than enormous

Yes, must get down a size or two but enormous sounds horrendous!

So were Shylock and Fagin are we going to rewrite Shakespeare and Dickens? I don't agree with censorship I think we have to learn from such things that it is just a stereotype not a norm. I have lovely Jewish friends who certainly don't look like either of these men are often drawn..

Yammy

So were Shylock and Fagin are we going to rewrite Shakespeare and Dickens? I don't agree with censorship I think we have to learn from such things that it is just a stereotype not a norm. I have lovely Jewish friends who certainly don't look like either of these men are often drawn..

The point of literature and all art forms is to inspire conversation and thinking.

If culture washing becomes the norm how bland and boring life will become.

A rogue character or plot should/could lead to a class and/or family discussion which can only enhance critical thinking in children and young adults.

I was an avid reader as a child and when nothing else was available I read my parents's books. I was introduced to Neville Shute, Nicholas Montserrat and Dennis Wheatley at an early age. There were things I didn't understand in all of them, but I just accepted that. I don't think the things I read disturbed me. Much of the world is strange to children.

i answered a you gov poll on this earlier, some of the things they are censoring are ridiculous, small people instead of small me. saying some people wear wigs for lots of different reasons....not just witches, can't say ugly or fat, but if i am not mistaken some people are ugly and fat, you just don't say it..lol, others are the black/white thing and the females are where they work, leave the books alone and let the parents decide, children will learn they are just stories, they are not REAL the same as most of the childrens movies out there, leave the childs imagination to grow and learn the same as we all did.

Harry Wormwood destroys the book that Matilda has borrowed from the library because of the title Moby Dick.

I do not want to live in a world of Harry Wormwoods.

To me, witches in storybooks look like the way ordinary women would have looked when the torturers had finished with them - pallid skin, twisted hands, black eyes, scraggy hair and so on. I've never seen Jewish women in them at all, but I wasn't looking, and neither would children be. Adults would have to put those ideas into their heads, and a child with parents who would do that is probably doomed anyway.

I heard that the witches would stay as is, with an added couple of lines saying that many people wear wigs for all sorts of reasons, and there is nothing wrong with that. It sounds a bit po-faced, but in the unlikely event that it occurs to a child that Dahl's witches are supposed to represent Jewish women the rider would cover it.

I think Miss Trenchbull is supposed to be scary, and she's so OTT that children aren't likely to believe she's real. Mine enjoyed that sort of scariness.

Fat/enormous - I don't know. I'm another who can't see the advantage of one over the other. It seems a bit hypocritical to me anyway - there is so much fat-shaming by politicians, the media and adults in general that it's no wonder children latch onto fat as a reason to bully one another.

I don't understand why Oompa Loompa have to be gender-neutral. Apart from not believing in 'gender', it doesn't seem very inclusive to single out children who claim to be 'non-binary' as a separate species. That one is lost on me, really.

I'd need to see more detail, really. I do know, however, that I wouldn't have read my children the books I grew up with if they hadn't been altered, and even my generation read bowdlerised versions of Grimm's Fairy Tales. It's just progress, really. From what I've seen (which is just a few newspaper summaries) the changes won't alter the stories or the magic.

Callistemon21

I'd rather be fat than enormous

Yes, must get down a size or two but enormous sounds horrendous!

Me too to be honest.
I am fat but don't think I'd like to be enormous - as that sounds... we'll, enormous!

How dare they say enormous! I'm enormous and am deeply offended. This must be changed at once!!

Some books we loved years ago we probably wouldn't read to our grandchildren though.

Biggles springs to mind - thats a "no"
and the Laura Ingalls Wilder house on the prairie series I think I'd have to re-read first as I know I didn't like the racism in that but don’t remember if it was in every book -
and then there's The Secret Garden which I really loved and which we listened to on a cover-to-cover type tape when my family was young- that definitely had elements of racism and colonialism.

We are making choices every day which is a personal censoring. As someone said, in this way, little by little these will die a natural death.

My brother loved Biggles in the 1940s and early 50s. He was completely horrified when he looked at the books as an adult.

AGAA4

GagaJo that is a personal question which you shouldn't be asking. My religion has nothing to do with you.

But you saying that the caricaturisation of an ethnic or religious group isn't offensive hinges on whether you're part of that group. And if you aren't, you're not in a position to say it isn't offensive.

Dahl was widely known to be an anti semite. I doubt Jews would be happy with the works in which he drew them as villains, playing as it does on a long history of Jewish people being portrayed as evil, murderous, child killers (back to the middle ages) and also linked to Nazi propaganda.

Yammy

So were Shylock and Fagin are we going to rewrite Shakespeare and Dickens? I don't agree with censorship I think we have to learn from such things that it is just a stereotype not a norm. I have lovely Jewish friends who certainly don't look like either of these men are often drawn..

If you've read The Merchant of Venice, you'll know that actually, robbing Shylock of his faith is a tragic and very sad story. I've had students in tears at the end, in the theatre. I know I'm biased when it comes to Shakespeare, but he definitely didn't show Christians in a good light, in that play. Shylock was definitely sinned against.