Roald Dahl books have been edited to remove the word "female" along with other edits.

[GoChasingWaterfalls]

www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/18/roald-dahl-books-rewritten-to-remove-language-deemed-offensive?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

It's literary terrorism.

It's not a conspiracy theory if it's demonstrably true. Remember staff at a publisher throwing a hissy-fit about JKR?

* As they're kids books I don't think it is unreasonable to substitute some words - if a word has changed so much over time that it's current use would be offensive or would actually lose the meaning of the narrative*

What is the issue with explaining and having a discussion regarding problematic material? One is also free to edit out words themselves as they read if they wish.

It is okay to explain that what is acceptable has changed over time. Children are perfectly capable of understanding. Why do you read to them at all if not to expand their understanding of history/the world and to encourage them to have more than 2 brain cells to rub together?

I disagree with these changes. Children are perfectly capable of understanding that words change. If anything it's a good lesson.

I remember reading The Famous Five asa kid in the 90s. There was a passage shoot Julian having to lock up at night instead of his mum because he was a boy. I thought how sexist it was and that clearly times had changed since then.

In 'Yes, Prime Minister' Sir Humphrey referred to Jim Hacker's political advisor as "that Wainwright female" behind her back. Certainly intended to dehumanise, but it would be daft to censor it because the script is making a point - that Sir Humphrey is a misogynist.

What year did this take effect? Considering buying a collection.

Will they erase Tolkien's Dwarves next, or add some gender-neutral language to help Éowyn in the "no man can kill me" "I am no man!" Scene?

Perhaps Paddington's sandwiches could contain avocado because Marmalade promotes diabetes.

The Hungry Caterpillar eats some quite unwholesome foods on Saturday. Maybe they're next for the censoring editing suite floor. They could definitely take out the line about him (them?) being a fat caterpillar, I mean, fat is clearly an insult...

Perhaps the animals in the Gruffalo could all be vegan because eating animals is wrong.

Art is made in a moment, and reflects that moment. Just because you don't live in that moment now, doesn't detract from the art itself, that's why we learn history, to appreciate the momentary nature of art.
Books are art. Stop "modernising" them. They've made them considerably worse and not saved anybody's sensibilities.

Listening to radio apparently Netflix has bought the rights so could be linked to trying to clean up image

Really sad

I wonder if they have underestimated how much the unadulterated versions are appreciated in the UK? Whilst I would have some sympathies with a very light touch edit on certain words, to lose the bite of Dahl's language and imagery would be something else. There's always natural justice in his stories but not everyone is nice!

SIL sent me a link about this a couple of days ago. I am so pissed off.

'Formidable female' is perfect. The alliteration gives force and punch to the description. Dahl chose it. Messing around with art in this way is sacrilege.

Couple of good articles about this now!
www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-senseless-re-editing-of-roald-dahl/
This one also references edits he made when alive too to remove racist stereotypes.

I’ve never liked Dahl much- there is undoubtedly a cruelty in his books which I find unattractive. It doesn’t seem to bother children though. They tend to enjoy seeing nasty people get their comeuppance. Altering a word here and there is one thing; wholesale rewriting quite another, particularly when the effect seems to be to make his language bland and ordinary. This doesn’t matter with Blyton, whose language is bland and ordinary anyway. But it really does matter with Dahl. If you don’t like him, don’t read him to your children. Don’t prettify his words though. My worry about this trend is that it will make all children’s books tediously beige and unchallenging. Surely good junior fiction should be a little bit subversive?

It's "inclusive" of males. Female ( currently ) has quite a strict definition until they undermine that word too.
Miss Trunchbull could have a beard and massive prosthetic breasts under the new regime.

These people have learned nothing from Brexit and Trump. As I have said before on MN, before Brexit I was like many other left-leaning progressive types - I genuinely believed that because I very rarely heard anyone expressing racist views racism was less prevalent in the UK than it had been. Then we had the referendum and in the aftermath it suddenly became horrifyingly clear that many of our fellow citizens had never changed their mind about anything, they just hadn't felt able to say what they thought except in the company of like-minded people - which of course meant that nobody had put the contrary point of view to them and had any chance to make them think again and change their minds.

It also became clear that other people, who weren't racist, had had legitimate concerns about immigration which politicians refused to acknowledge or discuss, so in frustration these people had turned to rabble rousers like Farage, who told them they were quite right, and that made the arguments even more polarised.

Simply suppressing language and attitudes you don't like doesn't make people think any differently. Taking the word 'fat' out of Roald Dahl won't stop overweight children being bullied. We need to talk openly about difficult subjects.

I don't see how you can work in children's publishing and not know how much children's minds love to travel.

This is the thing. Dahl wrote because he wanted to entertain children. That was who his books were for. He wouldn't have wanted children to be upset and indeed agreed to changes during his lifetime (the Oompah Loompas were originally depicted as black pygmies). This on the other hand hasn't been driven for the sake of the children, no the grown-ups (or should I say "groan-ups"?) are steering this for their own benefit.

As they're kids books I don't think it is unreasonable to substitute some words - if a word has changed so much over time that it's current use would be offensive or would actually lose the meaning of the narrative

Or you could take the opportunity to explain it to your child and teach them something new.

I’ll have get his books before being sanitised. I’ll check Amazon paperback copies.

Good idea Brenner

We had them all, then it looked as though we weren't ever going to have grandchildren, so gave them away, and now lo and behold, son and DIL have presented us with a lovely grandson totally unexpectedly after umpteen years!

I think that is a likely outcome. Quite a lot of children's literature now is very bland and beige.

Did it work? I thought Rowling was still publishing and her art pretty popular. Isn't Strike on the BBC? Isn't Fantastic Beasts still being filmed?

The death threats she gets are a disgrace, no doubt about that. IMO there is huge fault with how such threats are policed, both by social media and the actual police.

Quite a lot of children's literature now is very bland and beige.
I don't think this is any worse than ever. Children have access to so much literature, some is definitely light/formulaic but there are books galore for kids covering all sorts of issues.

A lot of literature we read in the past was pretty bland in topic really. We presumably just felt more comfortable with it because we were the target audience.

Female implies the category of sex, whereas 'woman' is now a gender neutral option that anyone can identify into it.

Girls are also female.

It re-directs the author's intent towards something that they themselves had not expressed.

I'm personally not a fan of Roald Dhal at all - but editing established works of art or literature is very Orwellian.

If you don't like Roald Dhal then don't read him, nor buy his work for your children.

It didn't work. Faced with a choice between losing the bestselling writer in the world and losing some junior inexperienced staff members and considerably less successful authors the publishers not surprisingly chose JKR. Other authors have been less fortunate. I'm thinking of Rachel Rooney and Gillian Philip. There was a concerted effort to get Onjali Rauf removed from the shortlist for a prestigious prize. No doubt there are many others. Hadley Freeman's article about Hannah Barnes' book about the Tavistock GIDS clinic includes this:

It wasn’t easy for Hannah Barnes to get her book published. As the investigations producer for Newsnight and a long-term analytical and documentary journalist, she is used to covering knotty stories and this particular one, she knew better than most, was complex. She had been covering the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), based at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in north London — the only one of its kind for children in England and Wales — since 2019 and decided to write a book about it. “I wanted to write a definitive record of what happened because there needs to be one,” she tells me. Not everyone agreed. “None of the big publishing houses would take it,” she says. “Interestingly, there were no negative responses to the proposal. They just said, ‘We couldn’t get it past our junior members of staff.’ ”

Those books really weren't very nice it's not a loss they were all burnt.

FFS.

If you are defending this. WAKE UP

Do we really want to encourage a generation of children who have to go through life with trigger warnings; too fragile to deal with any of life's inevitable difficulties?

If you keep editing or re-writing the past how do you learn about the breadths and depths of the human experience throughout time?