A first edition Charlie and the Chocolate Factory book. Photo: AFP / Frederic J Brown
If you pick up a copy of 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory', or 'The Witches' in a bookstore you might notice they have gobblefunked around with the words.
Out are 'fat', and 'ugly', and descriptions using the colours 'black' and 'white'.
There was heated debate when these edited versions of Roald Dahl's books were released last year in an attempt to make them more suitable for today's young readers.
The edits were considered skulduggery by many, but it was hardly the first time there has been an attempt to sanitise children's books.
Jenny Nagle, director of Auckland-based children's publisher OneTree House, has been involved in the industry for a long time.
She remembers working in Australia when the publisher of Enid Blyton's 'Noddy' series decided to make major edits. She disagreed with the move then and still does today.
"All art forms are of their time. Really it does a disservice to our readers, to the children, to try and back-pedal and try and change history," Nagle said.
Chris is a parent of three young children. He doesn't have any problem sharing Roald Dahl books with them and remembers loving them as a child, although as a parent of two girls, he does now notice how women are stereotyped in the stories.
However, he also was not worried about edited versions being available with updated language.
"It is fiction, it's not non-fiction, I don't see any issue," Chris said.
As long as the publisher was clear about the edits, parents can choose what version they would prefer to share with their children, he said.
"It's not like in '1984' where they are going to destroy every old version," he said.
Ben Brown says books provide kids with an understanding of how people once thought. Photo: National Library Imaging Services, Department of Internal Affairs
Te Awhi Rito New Zealand Reading ambassador Ben Brown said it was not right to judge old books through modern eyes as language goes through changes.
Books help to show children how people used to think and that language can be unpleasant at times, he said.
"You're going to live your life being offended by someone's language one day. If you don't know how to thicken your skin up a bit and get used to it, then you are going to have a tougher time then you need to in life."
Brown said he knows what he would do if he found out someone had edited his work 30 years after he had died.
"I think I'd find him and haunt him for the rest of his life with the words he cut out," Brown said, with a laugh.
To borrow a line from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - it seems the most important thing we have learned, so far as children are concerned, was to let them figure out the mess, of the words history has left.
Meanwhile, Puffin UK has announced it will republish a Classic Roald Dahl collection, no edits needed.
*Libby Kirkby-McLeod is a New Zealand author whose poetry and writing have appeared in a range of journals and online publications.
