Roal Dahl censorship

I remember a book being banned when I was at School. The First Time. Very graphic. How it passed censorship I'll never know. There was a to do and it made the local press.

 

Speaking of Enid Blyton, there are now people who are allowed to write books under her name with only very tiny font saying the actual author’s name on the book. I don’t know if you remember the ‘Naughtiest Girl’ books but they are now being sold in a box set of 10 books with Enid Blyton listed as the author even though she only ever wrote three of them. The characters and ideas have been sold to allow certain other authors to write stories using them. That’s just one example, Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown is another.

When books are as old as Roald Dahl’s they are normally out of copyright and can be rewritten by anyone, it’s only because his estate have renewed the copyright that it hasn’t happened yet. They could choose to not update them but I can guarantee that schools would eventually stop using them which means no more money for them.

Books really do change between print runs all the time, it’s pretty standard actually, it just isn’t normally written about in the papers.

 

I was a big Roald Dahl fan as a child. Read all of his children's books on my own sat in the local library by the time I was in the second year of junior school (which was quite an achievement for an idiot like me)

I remember reading every one they had in the library and then asking the librarian if there were any more that he'd written. She used one of those weird like reverse projector machine things (any idea what I mean cos I havent) and found a list of all his books. Checked against what they stocked and came up with a list of a few more that they didn't stick and got them all in for me.

Anyway all I'm going to say is that I don't the librarian was paying much attention when they accidentally also ordered me, aged about 7 or 8, switch bitch which I assure you is not a child's book at all. I remember reading the whole thing and thinking this one's not as good as his other stuff, I don't get it at all.

Not much of a point to this but just thought I'd share.

 

God help us.

 

Yes, he definitely wrote for adults too! Have you read Lamb to the Slaughter? It’s only a short story but is good. It’s used often with year 10s.

 

Care to expand so I can actually reply?

 

Whacks someone over the head with a frozen leg of lamb and then they eat it. It's very good. As are many of the stories he wrote for Tales of the Unexpected.

 

I haven't but I'll give it a read. I love a good book but don't read anywhere near as many as I'd like to really.

When I was in secondary school I think the books we read were a kestrel for a knave, there is a happy land, lord of the flies, who's life is it anyway and Romeo and Juliet, and I remember an anthology that had poems by Seamus heaney in it.

 

The set texts were changed a few years ago, it really caused a fuss because it meant entire syllabuses (syllabi?) had to be rewritten. GCSE texts now have to be by British authors which meant a LOT of popular texts were gone in one fair swoop. That shouldn’t have affected A Kestrel for a Knave of course but many schools dropped it at the same time or moved it down to lower years.

 

A while ago I was in a charity shop and picked up a Secret Seven book (by Enid Blyton)

The opening line was… “Mummy where’s my SS badge?”

Perfectly innocent. In context. Wish I'd bought it.

 

That’s just reminded me!!! Fanny, in The Faraway Tree books by Enid Blyton, was changed to be called Frannie a few years ago, Dick was changed to Rick and Bessie to Beth. I don’t remember a fuss at the time though.

 

With Susan George in Tales of the Unexpected..

 

What s wrong with Bessie? I get why they've changed the first two.

 

Just because it isn't a common nickname for Elizabeth anymore

 

Susan George was the assailant in that episode.

 

Call me old fashioned but I’m all for the author’s original rather than the librarian’s sanitised, edited re-write.

I’ve raised 3 kids on Dahl, including my 10 year old who is still enjoying the originals now. They all instinctively got the antiquated nature of some of the language, but are not borrowing terms to insult and run around offending their peers - or even their boomer dad.

Kids deserve more credit than grown-ups give them and get that language moves with the times. Are we to cancel every prior generation’s terminology?

As for the binning and destruction of books it puts me in mind of totalitarian regimes seeking to snuff out all but their own ideology.

I had always thought librarians to be the guardians of the written word, whatever its terms, not the censors and consignors to a cancelled history.

 

It’s not a black and white issue (no pun intended) but I think you’ve just about summed it up. You really can’t put a contemporary spin on literature or indeed a 2023 interpretation on the past. To do that must mean you fail to understand history, or learn the lessons from it.

 

It’s not a librarian’s sanitised rewrite, it’s whoever owns the copyright that does that. Books are updated all the time. Genuinely, it happens a lot. The terminology isn’t being ‘cancelled’ it’s being updated so it feels as fresh to the children reading it today as it did to children reading it in the past. When the books that are updated were originally written, they were meant to be read as modern, fun books. They can still be enjoyed as old fashioned books but that’s not the author’s/estate’s desire, they want kids to read it and it feel new and exciting, not like an historical fiction, that’s why they do updates.

As for your last paragraph, you’ve fundamentally misunderstood the role of a librarian and are thinking of an archivist. Of course I have to dispose of books regularly, every single school librarian does. The vast majority have a policy of disposing of books if not borrowed in 3-5 years (depending on size of stock). I’m not anywhere near that strict, and there’s lot of books that I wouldn’t dream of getting rid of, but the library I inherited had never been weeded and, whilst our budget for new books is great, they just instantly got swallowed up by the shelves and were buried amongst tat. Circulation numbers have tripled since weeding has begun. It’s probably one of the most important parts of my role. If you could see the books I’ve got rid of you would understand. I think you’re imagining very different books to what have actually gone, in fact, I bet you’ve never been heard of basically all of them as they are so underwhelming and not anything a child (or anyone) would be in a rush to read. We still have around 16,000 books and probably have every well known children’s book you can think of and thousands you can’t.

Edit: also, every single book I have disposed of (except one that was titled ‘how to cure your child of autism’ - **** that, who even bought that?!) is put on a trolley in the library with a big sign saying FREE BOOKS. Very few ever get taken because literally no one wants to read them.

 

Yeah, whilst kids can read Bessie and understand the book and think about how names used to be different, that’s not what the author/copyright holder wants kids to think about as they read it. They don’t want kids to read Bessie and think ‘who’s called Bessie? How old is this book?’ and be put off, they want them to read it and feel like it’s them or their mates they are reading about. A simple thing as an old fashioned name creates a barrier that makes the kid instinctively feel like they are reading about someone else in some other time rather than imagining it happening to them, now. Either option is fine, it’s up to the author/estate to choose which experience they want new readers to have.