Roald Dahl Goes Woke: Famous Children’s Author’s Books Heavily Altered by ‘Sensitivity Readers’

The publisher Puffin has scrubbed language deemed “insensitive” and “non-inclusive” from author Roald Dahl’s children’s books, in many cases rewriting the author’s words to be more politically correct.

Puffin and the Roald Dahl Story Company worked with Inclusive Minds, which is dedicated to “inclusion and accessibility in children’s literature,” its spokesperson told the Daily Mail, to dilute the creator’s playful narratives to be more acceptable to what they consider contemporary culture.

References to characters’ physical appearances have been sanitized, with the words “fat” and “ugly” now missing from every new edition of the books, the Daily Telegraph reported. So-called “sensitivity readers” were hired to make the changes.

In the original James and the Giant Peach, a character rhymes, “Aunt Sponge was terrifically fat / And tremendously flabby at that,” and, “Aunt Spiker was thin as a wire / And dry as a bone, only drier.”

With the new changes, the old verses now read: “Aunt Sponge was a nasty old brute / And deserved to be squashed by the fruit,” and, “Aunt Spiker was much of the same / And deserves half of the blame.”

The famous glutton Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is no longer introduced as “fat” but rather as “enormous.” In The Twits, Mrs. Twit used to be described as “ugly and beastly” but is now only “beastly.”

Gendered references have also been weakened so as not to be deemed offensive to women or the transgender community. In The Witches, a section musing that witches are bald beneath their wigs has the new disclaimer: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”

Matilda‘s Miss Trunchbull, the ferocious fictional headmistress of a school, formerly a “most formidable female” is now a “most formidable woman.”

In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Oompa Loompas, once called “small men,” are now “small people”. The Cloud-Men in James and the Giant Peach are now Cloud-People.

Prose that might be tangentially misconstrued as being culturally insensitive also appears to have been removed. In The BFG, the main character giant no longer wears a “black” coat and characters don’t turn “white with fear” anymore.

The Roald Dahl Story Company told the Guardian that periodic revisions of old books are perfectly standard today, assuring that it aims to preserve the author’s voice and style.

“When publishing new print runs of books written years ago, it’s not unusual to review the language used alongside updating other details including a book’s cover and page layout. Our guiding principle throughout has been to maintain the storylines, characters, and the irreverence and sharp-edged spirit of the original text. Any changes made have been small and carefully considered,” a spokesperson said.

However, Matthew Dennison, Dahl’s biographer, suggested that the books were designed for the lighthearted and imaginative minds of children, foreshadowing that some adults could ruin their fun in order to make them comfortable for all audiences.

“I’m almost certain that he would have recognized that alterations to his novels prompted by the political climate were driven by adults rather than children,” Dennison said of Dahl.