Opinion: Sensitizing children’s books opens a can of worms we don’t need

Staff File Photo / Crowds at Coolidge Park gather to watch a free showing of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" several years ago as part of an event sponsored by First Things First.
Staff File Photo / Crowds at Coolidge Park gather to watch a free showing of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" several years ago as part of an event sponsored by First Things First.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Late last week, after this editorial already had been written, publisher Penguin Random House said it would publish "classic" versions of author Roald Dahl's children's books as well as the controversial altered versions that were criticized in here.


It's a fact. Some of us are fat. Some of us have horsey faces. And some of us have wonky noses.

However, those colorful descriptions of characters in Roald Dahl books (and of real-world people), in days to come, won't be seen by the tender readers of his children's books. That is what Netflix (you read that right), the company that owns the copyright to the British author's books, has decided.

In the place of some of the words and phrases and full thoughts in his books will be other, less sensitive, apparently more inclusive words, phrases and thoughts. That they make the books duller, change meanings and remove the author's intent appear to be unimportant to the "sensitivity readers" of Inclusive Minds, a collective that says it works towards equality, diversity, inclusion and accessibility in children's books and which was hired by Netflix to, um, update the books.

Dahl has been dead for 33 years, so he can't comment. He still has living children and grandchildren, but even if they are upset about the changes, the entertainment streaming service is now in charge.

But we think this Bowdlerization of the children's stories does readers no favors, dampens their imaginations and shields them from a world that is full of people with a wide variety of physical, social and mental characteristics that readers won't be able to avoid (or make more inclusive by looking at them).

(We get the word "Bowdlerization" from Henrietta and Thomas Bowdler, an English sister and brother pair who, in preparing an 1807 version of Shakespeare's plays, removed words, phrases and passages thought to be racy or offensive.)

Among Dahl's works are "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "James and the Giant Peach" and "Matilda," all of which were made into movies that people may be familiar with, if not with the books that preceded them.

In "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," Golden Ticket holder Augustus Gloop will no longer be "fat" but is nevertheless described as "enormous." (And that's better?) And the Oompa-Loompas described in the book as "small men" are now "small people." (If Dahl saw them as men, shouldn't they be men?)

In "James and the Giant Peach," sons have become daughters, and the vivid "Aunt Sponge was a nasty old brute/And deserved to be squashed by the fruit" becomes the bland "Aunt Spiker was much of the same/And deserves half of the blame." (Who would be interested in reading something so lackluster?)

In "Matilda," the passage "She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling" becomes "She went to nineteenth century estates with Jane Austen. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and California with John Steinbeck." (If Dahl didn't invite Jane Austen and John Steinbeck on the trip, why should they be there?)

And in "Witches," the "sensitivity readers" Netflix employed must have felt it was necessary to take up for all witches (and wig-sellers), if you can imagine such a thing. Where the author's text says that witches are bald beneath their wigs, a new line adds, "There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that." (That line, to us, sounds more like something you might hear at a women's empowerment conference.)

All writers are products of their time and might not have written the same thing today as they did when they did write. But what right do we have to imagine new words for them, to make their work more inclusive, to change entire meanings of phrases?

Several living authors who might have known Dahl already have weighed in on the controversy.

"Roald Dahl was no angel," tweeted Salman Rushdie, "but this is absurd censorship. [Publisher] Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed."

We'd love to go back and change a few things we've written over the years because we've altered some of our thinking, learned new information or were flat-out wrong (though we didn't think so at the time). But it's all there in black and white, and you can look it up, warts and all.

We shudder to think how literature could be changed if what happened to Dahl's work starts the ball rolling faster. After all, two years ago six of Dr. Seuss's children's books were taken out of print because they "portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong."

Someone already suggested a Steinbeck classic could become "Of Mice and People." Lots of Twain would be lost. And we can imagine that "To Kill a Mockingbird" would become a rather drab short story because Boo Radley would just be a kind gentleman (or gentle lady, perhaps) next door, and Tom Robinson would never be accused of raping a white woman, so no trial, no conviction, no Best Actor Oscar for Gregory Peck.

Next thing you know, someone will start wanting to remove historical monuments.

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