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People on the left are apoplectic about banning books for kids, yet here they are literally rewriting them. That is every bit as bad as what they claim is happening with banning books.
The worst edits IMO are the ones just marked removed
Censoring old children's books. Yikes. This is frightening in more ways than one. Besides the obvious censorship, and rewriting the past being a bad thing. I can't wait to see what they do to "Brave New World", "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984". It'll be ironic and sad if they burn the old unedited Roald Dahl books. But also have we reached cultural stagnation, that old media still out competes new ones by such orders of m…
Uh... Roald Dahl is one of, arguably the greatest children's author of the 20th century. It's not like we're reprinting old pulp here because we can't write new stuff.
Frankly I think your hyperbole is misplaced. Dahl's works are republished, and they're children's literature, so it's not hard to imagine how mid-20th-century conceptions might be seen as a bit much for the target audience. No one's trying to prevent kids from reading the existing books[1], they're just trying to make a buck selling them to modern parents.
Does that make this a good idea? No, it's dumb. But it's hardly "yikes" territory either.
[1] Which would be the "censorship" you're talking about.
This is precisely the sort authoritarianism that I was taught to fear around the time I first read his books. Editing old books to comply with the current regime was one of the things that the bad guys did. That was one of the things our ancestors fought against in two world wars.
What would Ronald Dahl say about this? How would you feel if they did this to your writing long after you are gone?
Erasing Rudyard Kipling? WTF did he do wrong? His poetry was inspirational to me, as a child.
Good people cannot allow this to go unchallenged.
Edit: forgive me for expressing emotion.
Censoring old children's books. Yikes. This is frightening in more ways than one. Besides the obvious censorship, and rewriting the past being a bad thing. I can't wait to see what they do to "Brave New World", "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984". It'll be ironic and sad if they burn the old unedited Roald Dahl books. But also have we reached cultural stagnation, that old media still out competes new ones by such orders of m…
> But also have we reached cultural stagnation, that old media still out competes new ones by such orders of magnitude Where is the next Dahl? Why is there no modern Beatrix Potter? Kids still love those stories and style of writing, which is less trite than most of the modern children's books. It does feel like stagnation, with lots of content being churned out but none of it with great staying power. Instead the ol…
Do you have a child? There are all kinds of amazing children’s authors, loved by parents and kids, that have been creating books over the last 20 years.
Censoring old children's books. Yikes. This is frightening in more ways than one. Besides the obvious censorship, and rewriting the past being a bad thing. I can't wait to see what they do to "Brave New World", "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984". It'll be ironic and sad if they burn the old unedited Roald Dahl books. But also have we reached cultural stagnation, that old media still out competes new ones by such orders of m…
> But also have we reached cultural stagnation, that old media still out competes new ones by such orders of magnitude Where is the next Dahl? Why is there no modern Beatrix Potter? Kids still love those stories and style of writing, which is less trite than most of the modern children's books. It does feel like stagnation, with lots of content being churned out but none of it with great staying power. Instead the ol…
Media changes, art is reshaped by new generations. Roald Dahl is dead, the rights to his books have been sold and people are updating them to keep them relevant. This happens to translations (as an example) all the time as the popular lexicon changes. This is how media and art stays relevant. The world changes. The owners of the books have a vested interest in modifying them to continue to be relevant. The tweaks hav…
The best stories are timeless. If you think a story is no longer relevant, it probably wasn't very good in the first place.
What a generous description.
Instead of banning the books we don’t like, why not just rewrite them?
Changing with the times for the sake of relevance and sales is the the right of the copyright owners. Preventing them from modifying the text would be akin to preventing renovation of old apartment buildings by new owners.
That said, I do think it is important to be reminded of how authors viewed the world in the past. We should be reminded, at least tangientially, that governments of the past colonized and recall the lessons learned from that practice. I.e., let's not forget and be destined to repeat what came to be loathed.
Media changes, art is reshaped by new generations. Roald Dahl is dead, the rights to his books have been sold and people are updating them to keep them relevant. This happens to translations (as an example) all the time as the popular lexicon changes. This is how media and art stays relevant. The world changes. The owners of the books have a vested interest in modifying them to continue to be relevant. The tweaks hav…
It's not just a knee-jerk reaction to 'wokeness' to be upset by this kind of thing. My opinion is that people _should_ be upset by the presumption of some faceless editor that they're too stupid and base to apply their own judgment to the original text.