Roald Dahl ‘for adults’ backfires
A PUBLISHER’s attempt to cash in on the trend for adults reading children’s books backfired when it was accused of sexualising the cover of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
The Penguin Modern Classics edition is being released to mark the 50th anniversary of the book’s publication. It features a cover photograph of a young girl in makeup and feathers, perched on her mother’s knee with the blank-eyed expression of a doll.
The publishers will be hoping to capitalise on the nostalgia for Britain’s best-loved children’s books.
The cover appalled many fans of the book, who called it “creepy” and “grotesque” on social media. They said they would not buy the edition, claiming the image was reminiscent of US child beauty pageants and more suited to Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.
Joanne Harris, author of the bestselling Chocolat, tweeted: “I’m not sure why adults need a different cover anyway, but who was it who decided that ‘adult’ meant ‘inappropriately sexualised’?”
The book, first published in 1964, tells the story of Charlie Bucket, an impoverished boy who finds a golden ticket granting him entry to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Charlie is thoughtful and sweet-natured, but the other ticket holders are monstrous creations whose whims are indulged by their parents.
Penguin said the girl in the cover photograph — which was taken at a fashion shoot by photographers Sofia Sanchez and Mauro Mongiello — was not intended to be either Violet Beauregarde or Veruca Salt, the spoilt girls in Dahl’s tale, but a representation of the “twisted” parent-child relationships in the book.
It defended the cover, saying: “This design is in recognition of the book’s extraordinary cultural impact and is one of the few children’s books to be featured in the Penguin Modern Classics list.
“This new image for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory looks at the children at the centre of the story, and highlights the way Roald Dahl’s writing manages to embrace both the light and the dark aspects of life.” — © The Daily Telegraph, London