Censorship or rewriting ?

GrannyGravy13

Chardy

Of course if you want your grandchildren to read them, you can talk about all kinds of issues (providing you read it yourself first!). But little kids get these books out of the library, or read them on their own in school, and don't have a chance to discuss them with an adult.
I don't want censorship either, for adults, but taking the golliwogs out of Noddy is just updating them, not censorship. I'm sure there are still copies about if you want golliwogs in them.

taking the golliwog out of Noddy

this could be looked at from the point of view that the only toy of colour has been airbrushed out of Toyland.

Or maybe just put a person of colour in instead of a racist caricature?

So, would we tolerate stories containing rapists or child molesters (probably yes, given that Michale Jackson's music is still around)?

I wonder how BAME people would feel about this issue? Because otherwise, it's just white people advocating acceptance of racism again.

Chardy

Of course if you want your grandchildren to read them, you can talk about all kinds of issues (providing you read it yourself first!). But little kids get these books out of the library, or read them on their own in school, and don't have a chance to discuss them with an adult.
I don't want censorship either, for adults, but taking the golliwogs out of Noddy is just updating them, not censorship. I'm sure there are still copies about if you want golliwogs in them.

taking the golliwog out of Noddy

this could be looked at from the point of view that the only toy of colour has been airbrushed out of Toyland.

Sorry I got engrossed by the story - that’s the point is nt it
No don’t censor Dhal

I think that a few posters are not considering Dahl’s books use in schools.
I can think of only Julia Donaldson who is featured so widely and comprehensively in UK primary schools.
If teachers decide (rightly or wrongly) to stop using Dahl’s work, then it’s only burgeoning young readers who will suffer.
A necessary evil perhaps.
As I said up thread, this decision won’t have been taken lightly

GrannyGravy13

FannyCornforth

Same here GrannyGravy
I was a specialist Reading Teacher in working a mainstream Secondary School.
Most of my clientele were reluctant boys.

Four sons and a daughter here, DH and I were/are voracious readers all children were reluctant.

If it wasn’t for Roald Dahl, Tolkien and for the youngest JK Rowling I would have been pulling my hair out.

Yes! your post definitely resonates GG, similarly, husband and I are both voracious readers, as is one of my sons, in fact he reads far heavier stuff than we might pick up nowadays. My reluctant reader rarely reads a book anymore, he would say he hasn't got the time, it's a choice though he prefers screen time to unwind. However when he was a child I spent more time trying to point him towards books that I thought he might enjoy than my other one who was a natural bookworm, when he did find such material it was The Dahls, particularly The Witches and all The Potters I just thanked God he at least found some books he could be enthusiastic about. When he's here, I've kept a lot of their childhood favourites, he will go through our shelves and pull out certain books telling his children how much he enjoyed them, they've started on the HPs now.

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.

Ridiculous waste of time. Where will this end? Shall we take the whale out of Moby Dick because it might scare the reader?

Of course if you want your grandchildren to read them, you can talk about all kinds of issues (providing you read it yourself first!). But little kids get these books out of the library, or read them on their own in school, and don't have a chance to discuss them with an adult.
I don't want censorship either, for adults, but taking the golliwogs out of Noddy is just updating them, not censorship. I'm sure there are still copies about if you want golliwogs in them.

Glorianny

FannyCornforth

The Witches was definitely anti- Semitic. They were hook nosed; bald under their wigs; printed money; and kidnapped children (a reference to blood libel conspiracies).
Dahl was notoriously anti Jew.
He said, ‘even a stinker like Hitler didn’t pick them for no reason’.

I've always regarded The Witches as a slur on older women, whose noses look longer and who lose their hair and steal children because they don't have any. They were balanced by Luke's grandmother who cared for him.
Dahl was unpleasant in a lot of ways.

Yes that's how I tended to view witches, a slur on older women depicted in quite a horrible way of being a hag or crone, hook nose, warts 'an all, not very nice really, but the stuff of fairy tales for such a long time. My recollection of the Witches wasn't something I'd relate to anti Semitism, although allegedly Roald Dahl was an anti Semite. I didn't know that much about him back then when his books became popular with my children, other than he had a back injury sustained as a pilot in the war I believe, was married to Patricia Neal, they lost one of their children and he lived in Bucks and his granddaughter was Sophie Dahl. There would be among authors, like any section of society, some flawed individuals I imagine.

NotSpaghetti

There were always some aspects of Dahl that were "off" and we discussed it with our children.
Sometimes even books we don't like much are a learning thing.

I think that is the way forward NotSpaghetti discuss the books with your children, don't censor them.

NO censorship.

Debate Dahl and let him stand or fall by his work.

If enough people find his books offensive, they will eventually fall out of favour and people will stop reading them.

If you want to, you can find fault with my namesake, Dickens, he has a talent for stereotyping based on characteristics that many will find offensive.

Personally I don't want to see any Literature or Art censored or doctored or made 'palatable' - even if it upsets me - unless such is an obvious incitement to violence and 'recommends' hatred of a particular demographic.

There's a reason why particular authors gradually fall out of fashion - because they become irrelevant and no-one reads them anymore. That should be the only censorship IMO. Let their works gather dust - but they are an accurate reflection of the times in which they were written, they are in fact, part of human history.

I must admit that I didn’t get the cashier/ scientist thing.
Going under cover as a cashier in a supermarket is intrinsically funny.

Good post Elegran

In the new edition of Witches, a supernatural female posing as an ordinary woman may be working as a “top scientist or running a business” instead of as a “cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman”. Do we assume from this that the publishers think being cashiers or secretaries is insulting ordinary women? What on earth is offensive about either occupation? I have a friend who worked as a cashier to fit in around her children, she has a first class degree.

Nannyish ideas. Let people make up their own minds if they find something offensive.

Idiotic idea.

Pragmatic is definitely the word GagaJo
This won’t have been done on a whim

Ronald Dahl's original unsanitised books will rocket in value! Ridiculous censorship. What has come over us?!

Elegran

Every so often, Puritanical movements emasculate any literature that doesn't fit their ideas of perfection. In 1807 Thomas Bowdler and his sister Henrietta published their first version of "The Family shakespeare" “in which nothing is added to the original Text: but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a Family.” About 10% of the text was removed, mostly references to sex or violence. Among other bowdlerising, the prostitute character in Henry IV, Part 2 is omitted, and Ophelias suicide was replaced by accidental drowning, .

If this new wave of censorship takes off, it will progress to rewriting history to remove the disturbing bits, so that we no longer read that Anne Boleyn was beheaded - perhaps her sentence will be changed to 100 hours of community service. The hundred years war was will be shortened to a fortnight of verbal threats on Facebook, and Julius Caesar will be confronted by a deputation bearing a document of abdication to sign and a promise to devote himself to good works in the future, instead of being stabbed by most of the Senate.

Then there is the Bible, of course. That will be rewritten so that Christ doesn't get nailed to a cross, but instead is sent home to his mother's house and has to report to a probation officer once a week to learn how to conform to societal norms.

Ha! Good post

As a fat person, I also don't mind the word 'fat'. To me, it's just an adjective. BUT the trouble is, that children use it as an insult, as does much of society. My grandson has been in trouble for school for using it this way, which has been a bit confusing for him, because he knows Granny is fat. But we've told him that things can be different at home and at school and just to do as he's told.

If a book is instructional, Of Mice and Men, for example, deliberately exploring discrimination and bigotry, then it can be used as a teaching aid. Unlike the Dahl books where the characters are made into villainous racial stereotypes, implying that people with these characteristics are evil.

I think the Dahl Foundation are being pragmatic.

I have no problem with the word fat. No idea why calling someone enormous is preferable to being called fat.

I wonder what Miriam’s Big Fat Adventure should be called?

My 6yo DGD knows she's been taught in school not to refer to people as fat. And if I say 'fat', she will tell me that it is hurtful to say that.
Surely it's either use 2023 language, or lose the books.

I don’t think the words should be changed If thats what you believe then everything from the Bible upwards needs changing GagaJo

'Despite Dahl publicly admitting he was anti-Semitic in an interview shortly before his death at age 74, in addition to a number of reports of his alleged misogyny and racism'

time.com/5937507/roald-dahl-anti-semitism/

Rather than have the books pulled from publication, I'd say changing the wording to fit modern belief systems is probably sensible. Dahl was a known anti semitic and probably a racist too. However, I use his work in my teaching and agree it would be a shame to lose some of his writings due to unacceptable language.