Let Him Go Out of Print

James and the Giant Peach and The Witches were the stuff of childhood reading when my son was growing up, as Enid Blyton was a staple of my childhood. No question that Roald Dahl was a brilliant writer but who says that anyone’s books have to hang around forever? I’m mystified by the current battle between those who want to hand the master’s words down unedited to their children and those who demand they should be cleaned up to suit changing tastes.

Dahl himself changed his original “pygmies” into the Oompa Loompas that today’s readers are familiar with. He succumbed to pressure, perhaps but still, succumbing was his to do.

Amid all the uproar about the Puffin edits at the hands of sensitivity readers with a clunky touch, the wisest words I’ve heard came from Philip Pullman, quoted on the Guardian podcast, Today in Focus:

If Dahl offends us, let him go out of print—that’s what I’d say.

He followed with a long string of contemporary British children’s writers. I didn’t catch all the names, but among them were Michael Morpurgo, Frances Hardinge, Malorie Blackman, Mini Grey, Jacqueline Wilson, and Beverley Naidoo. Pullman ended by saying:

read all these wonderful authors who are writing today who don’t get as much of a look in because of the massive commercial gravity of people like Roald Dahl.

Smith, Jessie Willcox, 1863-1935 (artist); L. Prang & Co. (publisher), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

That’s exactly it. Oh, children’s literature, must we carry on as if books for the young can never themselves grow old?

Name me a contemporary writer for adults who’s called on to compete with Charles Dickens or the Brontes, the way we all have to do with the long-dead heavyweights in our field. In revising Roald Dahl’s text, and then reprising a set of “classic” editions (following the outrage at the hamfisted edits by committee) we find commercial gravity meeting unreasoning nostalgia. And of course, when you cater to nostalgia, the dollar signs remain glittering into the future.