Books burned at woke ‘alter’

Roald Dahl’s tales for kids suffer posthumous P.C. rewrites

‘WORDS matter,” begins a publisher’s note appended to the copyright page of the latest editions of Roald Dahl’s iconic children’s books. Yes, they do.

Dahl knew that better than anyone, as he was one of the world’s greatest wordsmiths and took extraordinary care over every word he wrote.

“You must be a perfectionist,” he said. “That means you must never be satisfied with what you have written until you have rewritten it again and again, making it as good as you possibly can.”

But editors at Puffin, who now publish the late author’s books, decided they could improve on Dahl’s perfectly crafted words by exposing them to a woke overhaul.

Sensitivity censors

In perhaps the most egregious example yet of book-publisher censorship, “sensitivity readers” were hired to trawl through his entire body of work and identify hundreds of his words and phrases that might be triggering to the easily offended. And they were then purged. A stunning, damning exposé by the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper revealed that “language relating to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race” has been edited, cut and, in some cases, completely rewritten.

The examples the Telegraph unearthed are jaw-dropping in their pointless virtue-signaling and imbecility.

In Dahl’s 1983 novel “The Witches,” about a young boy growing up in a world run by witches, there have been 59 changes.

The word “chambermaid” becomes “cleaner,” “great flock of ladies” is changed to “great group of ladies,” “You must be mad, woman!” is now “You must be out of your mind!” and “the old hag” is altered to “the old crow.”

Even “foul bald-headed females” is cut to “foul females” despite the fact the witches are all bald in the book. Apparently, it’s fine for kids to think witches can be foul, they just can’t be hairless.

Ludicrous.

The sentence “Even if she is working as a cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman” now reads: “Even if she is working as a top scientist or running a business.”

Are we supposed to deduce from this that children should be taught it’s demeaning to be a supermarket cashier or an office assistant?

Other Dahl classics have been similarly butchered at the altar of political correctness.

The Telegraph reports that in “Matilda,” Miss Trunchbull’s “great horsey face” is now just “face,” “eight nutty little idiots” has been changed to “eight nutty little boys,” and a reference to a character “turning white” has become “quite pale.”

Chillingly, “mothers and fathers” is now “parents.”

Why? Are kids not allowed to be told there are mothers and fathers in the world anymore?

In “James and the Giant Peach,” the Cloud-Men are now called “CloudPeople,” and Miss Sponge is no longer allowed to be called “the fat one.”

In “The Twits,” Mrs. Twit is no longer “ugly and beastly” but simply “beastly.” Worse, “ladies and gentlemen” is now “folks,” presumably lest it offend nonbinary children.

And, comically, the phrase, “you can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and double chin and stick-out teeth” has had one deletion, with “double chin” removed. Why on earth is that deemed more offensive than the other physical critiques?

And so it goes on, and on, and ridiculously on.

Off’d color phrases

In my favorite (for all the wrong reasons) edit, in “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” a reference to tractors that reads “the machines were both black” has been cut on grounds of subliminal racism.

Yes, the color of tractors is apparently a racial issue.

I can’t pretend I didn’t laugh out loud at the more preposterous and mind-bogglingly futile alterations.

For instance, the character of Augustus Gloop from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is no longer described as “fat.” Now he is referred to as “enormous,” as if this is less likely to cause upset.

But then I stopped laughing, because I realized just how outrageous, and dangerous, this is.

By rewriting vast swaths of a great writer’s work, purely to appease the neversatisfied, alwayswhining woke brigade, Puffin has surrendered to a new form of fascism.

As author Michael Shellenberger tweeted: “This is totalitarian censorship and should be broadly condemned by authors & publishers.”

“Succession” star Brian Cox agreed, raging: “It’s disgraceful. It’s a kind of form of McCarthyism, this woke culture, which is absolutely wanting to reinterpret everything and redesign and say, ‘Oh, that didn’t exist.’ Well, it did exist. We have to acknowledge our history.”

Salman Rushdie, an author recovering from a horrific terrorist attack on him because of words he has written, described it as “absurd censorship” and added: “Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed.” Yes, they should. The whole point of Roald Dahl’s fantastical books is to challenge children’s minds, even if it unsettles or scares them in the process.

All great literature is surprising and provocative, otherwise it wouldn’t be so readable.

The fact that Dahl has sold over 300 million copies of his books shows that people love them just the way they were written.

And the fact that, as Rushdie also observed, Dahl himself was “no angel” and has been accused of antiSemitism, among other things, is irrelevant.

Cultural vandalism

This scandal isn’t about Dahl as a person or his own views, and we’re not talking about edits done to remove actual racism or bigotry.

It’s about the latest salvo in a relentless war on language and art heritage by dementedly self-righteous woke wastrels who think they know better than we do about what we should be allowed to hear, read, watch, laugh at or think.

It’s cultural vandalism of the worst kind, and just as insidious as the attempts to deny biological sex in the transgender rights debate.

The bigger question is: How can this be happening in democracies like Britain and America?

I’d expect it in countries like North Korea, or China, where this kind of censorship was the hallmark of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

But for supposed homes of free speech to be kowtowing to the woke cancel-culture mob in such an appalling way is pathetic.

Roald Dahl would be turning in his grave at what’s being done to his words, and by the tacit approval of the gutless goons running his estate who gave their approval to this literary arson.

As for Puffin, what kind of publisher would even contemplate doing such a thing to one of its greatest writers?

I’ll tell you what kind: one that is spineless, supine, shameful and spectacularly stupid.

In implementing this crude, cowardly censorship, Puffin forgot its own golden rule: Words matter.