The War Over Children’s Literature Has Only Just Begun

We can’t yet rule out the possibility that Puffin has pulled off a fabulous marketing wheeze. When news broke over the weekend that future editions of their Roald Dahl books would contain hundreds of edits relating to “weight, mental health, violence, gender and race” — the word “fat” removed, for instance, the “Cloud-Men” of James and the Giant Peach swapped for “Cloud-People”, and the phrase “ladies and gentlemen” replaced by “folks” — I immediately marched down to our local children’s bookshop to order a box-set of the original editions that I so enjoyed as a child.