Despite Roald Dahl having enjoined his publishers not to "so much as change a single comma in one of my books", in February 2023 Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Books, announced it would be re-writing portions of many of Dahl's children's novels, changing the language to, in the publisher's words, "ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today."[8] The decision was met with sharp criticism from groups and public figures including authors Salman Rushdie[9][10][11] and Christopher Paolini,[11] British prime minister Rishi Sunak,[9][10] Queen Camilla,[9][12] Kemi Badenoch,[13] PEN America,[9] and Brian Cox.[13] Dahl's publishers in the United States, France, and the Netherlands announced they had declined to incorporate the changes.[9]
In The BFG, more than eighty changes were made, including changing or removing references to colour in people (such as changing "Something very tall and very black and very thin" to "Something very tall and very dark and very thin", "the flashing black eyes" to "the flashing eyes", "their skins were burnt brown by the sun" to "their skins were burnt by the sun", "white as a sheet" to "still as a statue", and removing "His skin was reddish-brown"), changing "mother and father" to "parents" and "boys and girls" to "children", and changing "Esquimo" to "Inuit", "Sultan of Baghdad" to "Mayor of Baghdad", and "man-eating giants" to "human-eating giants".[14][15]
| Original text | 2023 text[15] |
|---|---|
| Inside the jar, just below the edge of the label, Sophie could see the putting-to-sleep dream lying peacefully on the bottom, pulsing gently, sea-green like the other one, but perhaps a trifle larger.
'Do you have separate dreams for boys and for girls?' Sophie asked. 'Of course,' the BFG said. 'If I is giving a girl's dream to a boy, even if it was a really whoppsy girl's dream, the boy would be waking up and thinking what a rotbungling grinksludging old dream that was.' 'Boys would,' Sophie said. 'These here is all the girls' dreams on this shelf,' the BFG said. 'Can I read a boy's dream?' |
Inside the jar, just below the edge of the label, Sophie could see the putting-to-sleep dream lying peacefully on the bottom, pulsing gently, sea-green like the other one, but perhaps a trifle larger.
'Can I read more dreams?' |
