Roald Dahl's Books Being Altered

[littlebabyjesus]

Ive no opinion on that, it sounds pretty crap this panto - i was making a more general point

I was trying to illustrate a general point with a specific example. One thing we know about child development is that a sense of right and wrong appears very early in infancy. I don't think kids are scarred by tales in which wrongdoers meet violent ends to receive their just deserts. If they themselves have been violent in intent, it's the most fitting thing to happen.Even the film version of the Wizard of Oz has the wicked witch melting to death.

 

[ska invita]

I was trying to illustrate a general point with a specific example. One thing we know about child development is that a sense of right and wrong appears very early in infancy. I don't think kids are scarred by tales in which wrongdoers meet violent ends to receive their just deserts. If they themselves have been violent in intent, it's the most fitting thing to happen.Even the film version of the Wizard of Oz has the wicked witch melting to death.

interesting....thinking of the stories that have "scarred" (stayed with) me its injustices that really stick in the mind

that thomas the tank engine one mentioned, i didnt read or see that, but i did see a similiar Canadian (?) kids film about an alternate universe where there was only one sunny day a year on a planet of rain and one kid gets locked in a cupboard on that day while the other kids run outside and play.
the kid may or may not have deserved it, i cant remember, but its still felt unfair.
#JusticeForTheCanadianCupboardOne

 

[Agent Sparrow]

It's not been done for 'woke' reasons, it's been done to make money. I loved his books as a kid and I think this is a bit silly but some people have properly overreacted to it. Also as someone who's done some of the work of a sensitivity reader for a publishing company, let me just say that if sensitivity readers didn't exist, you wouldn't be able to walk down the street without stepping on a book someone had chucked out of the window in a rage

I didn’t remember Dahl as being too problematic from my youth - the dodgy bits I recalled were to do with his baddies being ugly and often fat, which isn’t a trope that is particularly challenged even these days. Then in lockdown school my eldest had a task based on a passage from George’s Marvellous Medicine and I remember being taken aback by some misogynistic language. Then she got given Esio Trot, which is basically a man gaslighting a woman into a relationship by disposing of her much loved pet! With both we read them but had a “teaching moment” about the values.

Many of his stories written for adults are problematic and whilst there’s a much greater argument for not editing those, it’s not hard to argue that similar if less overt themes run through his child catalogue.

Sensitivity editor sounds an interesting job though!

Keeping children wrapped in cotton wool is not all its cracked up to be. It insulates them from reality.
Reading a story about a child whose life is not all roses is a way to learn empathy. It may be about how different life was in the past and how some children still have to live like this. It makes children think beyond themselves. Nothing wrong with that.

Well it’s about ages and stages. Nowt wrong with adolescents and hardier older children reading the originals, as long as there’s discussion about some of it (like the rape in Sleeping Beauty). But I wouldn’t want my kids to have read that age 5 or 6. My 9 year old, sensitive soul that she is, probably wouldn’t be ready for the originals yet.

Well there's that scene in Thomas the Tank Engine where one of the engines is misbehaving and so they brick up his tunnel and leave him there forever!

Horrific obvs, but I can appreciate the desire

There’s an interesting theory that Rock a Bye Baby was possibly a Native American lullaby, and the themes represent sleep deprived mums expressing their frustrations to their children with a soothing song.

 

[ska invita]

I was trying to illustrate a general point with a specific example. One thing we know about child development is that a sense of right and wrong appears very early in infancy. I don't think kids are scarred by tales in which wrongdoers meet violent ends to receive their just deserts. If they themselves have been violent in intent, it's the most fitting thing to happen.Even the film version of the Wizard of Oz has the wicked witch melting to death.

Its true in pantos everyone cheers along when the villain gets their comeuppance.
Is this teaching mob vengeance?
Should pantos have more examples of mediation and community/restorative justice in them?

 

[DotCommunist]

Punch and Judy

a leftover from italian comedia apparently. Out of time and place yet still funny. I read a punch and judy veteran once asked which regional crowd differences stuck with him and he said the kids in liverpool will never tell the policeman where punch is hiding. lol.

 

[Agent Sparrow]

Because they had been out of copyright for so long publishers could do what they liked with them. Having grown up on Disney versions of Cinderalla and all - when I read the original story I was shocked. It didn't end at the marriage and there was murder involved.

Am I getting Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson mixed up?
Edit to add: yes I am mixing them up Cinderella is Grimm.

What was the murder in Cinderella? I remember the part about the sisters cutting off their toes being much more gruesome but can’t remember a murder.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Unlike real life, storytelling has rules. Thing a happen for reasons. Bad things happen to bad people. It's really not like real life at all!

 

[friendofdorothy]

What was the murder in Cinderella? I remember the part about the sisters cutting off their toes being much more gruesome but can’t remember a murder.

Didn't Cinderella turn murderous? I cant remember now it was 40 years ago when I came across the originals. I cant recall if the publishers I worked for re published them in that original form

 

[JimW]

i imagine there are enormous amounts written about this in academia around child development and how children process information. in the uk at least in the past children weren't really seen as children they were just silly little adults who needed to hurry up and grow up and learn how harsh the world was. education was a short sharp shock tactic. there's definitely a balance to be found between scaring and scarring children into having morals and presenting the world as a la la land

im happy to leave it to the professionals to work their way though it all

i do wish the artwork in kids books and cgi films wasnt quite so cartoony though

Bit of a myth about children not being seen as different and special in the past afaik, even the making and giving of toys suggests otherwise. Maybe it was a few particularly dark decades in early years of industrialism coloured later impressions.

 

[Agent Sparrow]

Didn't Cinderella turn murderous? I cant remember now it was 40 years ago when I came across the originals. I cant reacll if the publishers I worked for re published them in that original form

Tbf I prefer that to the Disney certain when she’s just saved by a man!

 

[frogwoman]

Censorship defo works the other way. A certain Tory kept the children's book 'Ferdinand the Bull' out of the house for its anti-animal cruelty message.

Tbh I loved Esio Trot. I can't remember the gaslighting tho but I think as long as its made clearer that it's just a story and not how to behave in real life. I also liked the one about the kid living on a farm who makes potions and turns his family into giants.

I thought Noddy and Just William were bad even as a child because they kept referring to people as 'savages' and 'street arabs' and these were supposed to be responsible grown ups and not twisted kids like Roald Dahl's characters.

 

[ska invita]

Bit of a myth about children not being seen as different and special in the past afaik, even the making and giving of toys suggests otherwise. Maybe it was a few particularly dark decades in early years of industrialism coloured later impressions.

definitely there was some recognition of childhood, but undeniably treated harshly and more like adults over all, particularly with work....then theres all the Master So and So, little posh ten year olds giving orders on boats and so on. The invention of the teenager much later also, famously
Certainly very different

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Bit of a myth about children not being seen as different and special in the past afaik, even the making and giving of toys suggests otherwise. Maybe it was a few particularly dark decades in early years of industrialism coloured later impressions.

Probably better to say that our modern notion of how it is special is rather recent. Lots of societies have had rites of passage after which individuals are expected to obey a different set of rules. But there are perhaps two things here - one about granting the young more freedom and the other about protecting the young from certain realities. I think they're linked but not the same.

This isn't quite a fully thought-out position, but have freedoms been taken away in order to provide more protection?

 

[seeformiles]

ive just had a flashback to the Hans Christian Anderson collection i had as a kid...haven't thought about that in 40 years i dont think...i didnt have much as a kid growing up so it was a book i poured over and over...there were some great painted pictures in there...but yeah the story of the Little Match Girl was particularly harrowing. Im going to look it up now but my memory is she just tries to sell single matches and then freezes and dies. Dark shit

The Happy Prince (Oscar Wilde I think) never fails to make me blub at the end

 

[klang]

Punch and Judy is an obvious example.

saw a P&J show on a beach last summer. Toddler loved it, and I don't mind him being exposed to a bit of casual violence / slapstick / theatre. It's probably not too far off him getting into wrestling when he's a bit older.

What I found a bit more dubious was the puppeteer working himself into a proper rant in the end - started off with the need to preserve P&J shows, got quickly into Great British values and traditions, followed by an anti-vegetarian speech (vegetarianism being non-British and should be left to cultures who are comfortable with it).

I was a bit worried about him, in the blazing sun in his puppeteering outfit, sweating streams and ranting away.
But I also found his rants a bit out of place, as surely his job was to entertain the toddlers around him, rather than educating the adults, who, unfortunately, seemed to largely agree with him and gave generously when the hat was passed around.

 

[klang]

it was all very Speaker's Corner....

 

[Artaxerxes]

theyre called Editors and they are appointed by others in a publishing house. A good publisher builds up a strong culture and becomes a branding that can be trusted in because of the editorial work (including commissioning).

Editors play a massive role in any published book. We think of books as the work of one person but there are many great editors behind the scenes whose work at times can be highly creative and artistic

As series go on and series and authors become more famous editors ability to influence gets less which is why Game of Thrones is just undiluted crap by now.

 

[friendofdorothy]

Dahl's kids books were after my time as a child, so I can only look at them with adult eyes. My niece used to read them and I vaguely remember her being scared but the witches and looking to check who was wearing a wig. But at least they had some strong female characters in them, like Sophie in the BFG.

I still feel angry at absence of any good female role models in my youth. I'm angry that I had to suffer the sexism of my generation's 'Janet and John' books warped education. All the fun, adventurous characters were male and all female characters were silly, pretty passive sops or ugly horrible women. Boys got to do stuff and girls just had to be pretty, if they were included at all. 'He' meant he or she in all books then. I was confused but the ubiquitous be a good clean quite girl type messages. Obviously I wasn't aware of it at the time - many years of consciousness raising and self reflection later to overcome that.

Children are in no position to discern the underlying assumptions and prejudices in the books they read and what they watch.

Publishers only rewrite stuff to sell more books. They update and repackage old books all the time.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Most kids publishers, fiction and non-fiction, do now have a conscious policy that 'every child should see themselves in our books'. It is a pity imo that so many parents seem to still want their kids to read what they read. There are lots of great new books around.

 

[klang]

Most kids publishers, fiction and non-fiction, do now have a conscious policy that 'every child should see themselves in our books'. It is a pity imo that so many parents seem to still want their kids to read what they read. There are lots of great new books around.

any recommendations?

 

[ska invita]

As series go on and series and authors become more famous editors ability to influence gets less which is why Game of Thrones is just undiluted crap by now.

do you mean the tv series? i think it went a bit shit when they ran out of the books to adapt and it got handed over to staff writers to come up with the plot

you are likely very right about the author power thing, though there are some editors who wield as much power as authors and also have a long working relationships with certain authors

 

[ska invita]

any recommendations?

Letterbox Library | bookseller celebrating equality and diversity

With over 40 years' experience, Letterbox Library is a leading children's bookseller and education supplier, bringing teachers, librarians and families the best in inclusive children's books

www.letterboxlibrary.com

 

[ska invita]

Letterbox Library | bookseller celebrating equality and diversity

With over 40 years' experience, Letterbox Library is a leading children's bookseller and education supplier, bringing teachers, librarians and families the best in inclusive children's books

www.letterboxlibrary.com

i think im right in saying letterbox also have a parent and child reading panel to see how books are received

 

[danny la rouge]

I grew up with children’s literature (and television based on that literature) that did not reflect my life at all. It was all kids with nannies, governesses or who went to boarding school. Who had foreign holidays, who went skiing, who had holiday homes. None of it was remotely like my life.

I’m not sure how much improved it is now that publishers are awash with middle class people deciding how to reflect real people’s lives…

 

[friendofdorothy]

Yeah noddy and just William are dodgy as fuck. I remember picking up random noddy books as a kid who had only watched the TV series and being shocked at all the racism.

I designed the supermarket books of the 90s BBC TV Noddy too. Much better stories than the originals.

 

[ska invita]

I’m not sure how much improved it is now that publishers are awash with middle class people deciding how to reflect real people’s lives…

not all childrens books are written by middle class doogooders

 

[klang]

not all childrens books are written my middle class doogooders

toddler is obsessed with the music....which is a bit boring, unfortunately. I was hoping for more.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

any recommendations?

I'm not now the best person to ask regarding fiction for young kids. 20-odd years ago, I worked in a bookshop and I read quite a few of the new kids' releases while I was supposed to be stacking shelves. There was lots of stuff that made me laugh. I apologise that this is vague.

 

[ska invita]

"Young adult" books have been one of the biggest boom areas of writing in the last decade, and again, lots of new voices coming through, certainly not a drab middle-class committee prescribed tick box exercise

ive not read any of them

 

[friendofdorothy]

I grew up with children’s literature (and television based on that literature) that did not reflect my life at all. It was all kids with nannies, governesses or who went to boarding school. Who had foreign holidays, who went skiing, who had holiday homes. None of it was remotely like my life.

I’m not sure how much improved it is now that publishers are awash with middle class people deciding how to reflect real people’s lives…

yes. Mary Poppins, Peter Pan, Peter Rabbit, etc. Funny how we were all supposed to relate to upper class edwardians. Even Paddington has a housekeeper. and the one of the few female characters in Tom and Jerry on the TV was a black maid who was scared of mice.

When I started working in publishing in 80s it was still full of posh toffs. Recall one editor (who went yatching at the weekend and ended up marrying someone who owned a castle) seriously saying ' but class doesn't really exist anymore, does it?' and being soundly disabused of that idea by the dept assistant who came from an Irish family of a north London council estate.

Recall learning that posh southern people have different names for meals for tea/ dinner/ supper etc.