kryptyd

What do you think about censorship in kids' books?  I'm talking specifically about older books being updated to fit better with the morals and sensitivities of the present day.   For people like us (I'm presuming if you're reading this, you're a person like me - that is, some sort of a leftie) the natural reaction is probably that changing books in this way is dreadful, wrong and bad.  

I'm thinking about this because I'm reading the Malory Towers books for my daughter at night at the moment.  I enjoyed those books as a kid and I thought it would be fun to share them.  I was conscious though, that I might have to do a bit of on-the-fly censorship while reading thanks to Enid Blyton's general unpleasantness around issues of class, "uppity" girls getting a well deserved slap from boys, and so on.  As it turned out, I was pleasantly surprised.  I had to do no live censorship of the first 3 books at all, and thought there were some nice lessons and morals in there.  Blyton didn't seem as bad as she had when I was reading some of her mystery books to the kids when they were younger.  Well, you can probably see where this is going.... I picked up book 4 and suddenly everything was a great deal more unpleasant again - very vicious language towards some characters including a big load of fat shaming that was presented as being fully deserved by the girl on the end of it, and yes, characters hitting and slapping each other, pushing them across rooms so that they are injured and so on.   Funnily enough my compendium of books 1-3 had less modern-looking artwork on the cover than 4, and sure enough when I looked on the inside cover of 4 it was a newer version that had been changed again to be closer to the original text.  

There was a bit of a funny incident around this same thing last year.  I don't know if it was a big deal where you are, but here there was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth at the fact that Roald Dahl's books were being updated to take out some of the more vicious language.  I was watching a story about it on the news at my mother-in-law's place and she was saying to me "ooh, that's terrible isn't it?  Why would they do that?".  I made a non-committal noise.  I knew well she had never read a Roald Dahl book and didn't know what sort of things they were editing out.   I absolutely loved his stuff back when I was little in the 80s, but I can remember my sister back then being very scared and disgusted about some of the stuff in his books.  So, even 80s kids could be scared by Roald Dahl.  It's no wonder that some of the language in those books would raise eyebrows today.   My feeling on Dahl is that there might not be much left if you removed the nasty bits... but I've not read any of his censored books.  But anyway, the funny bit was a while later we went to see my kid's show from her theatre class, and some of the kids were doing little scenes from Dahl's Matilda.  There was a scene where Matilda's dad is berating her and calling her all sorts of colourful insults.  And my mother-in-law was sitting next to me, horrified by the lines and whispering over "ooh, that's terrible isn't it, ooh that's a bit much..."   Well, I found that amusing anyway! 

So I'm not sure what I'm saying here.  The heavily amended Enid Blyton book made for much more pleasant reading for me than the less edited one.  It doesn't really add anything to the story to find out suddenly in the unamended book 4 that the main antagonist is regarded as fat, and gets insulted for it on a regular basis.  I certainly don't want to be reading fat=bad stuff to my 7 year old kid.  I suppose at least I am spared from Blyton's poor=bad beliefs in these particular books, since everyone going to Malory Towers school is rich!  

I feel less ambivalent about Roald Dahl being amended.  I suspect that amending his (often cruel and nasty) texts is damaging the stories in a big way.  I don't know though.  Should this be a moral issue, applied equally to all books, and the author's intentions should not be overidden?  Hmmmm 

I recently finished The Grey Bastards by Jonathan French. I'm a strange person whose favourite genre of books is fantasy, but yet I'm extremely picky about them and don't like most of 'em. This was a great book. Firstly, it's got orcs, and I love orcs. It's described on the front cover as being a "foul-mouthed fantasy novel that will appeal to fans of Joe Abercrombie". That is reasonably accurate, but I prefer this book to Abercrombie's stuff. I do like JA, but he is slightly too cynical for my blood. The Grey Bastards, like Abercrombie's stuff is set in a harsh world, and written with a modern sensibility. But it's more good-hearted. I don't mind dirt, filth and violence, as long a book's heart is in the right place.

I found it an extremely addictive read, with lots of characters I loved and rooted for. All the characters, including the baddies, had complex and believable motivations. It also had several great female characters, despite being a typically male-dominated sexist fantasy type society. One of the races is this book is centuars, which is unusual. Insane, dreadful ones.

You don't need to be a pervy-orc-fancier or anything to enjoy this book. You should read it. :)