The Latest Breaking News from Puffin Books

Back in 2023, a bitter debate erupted over the editing of Roald Dahl’s children’s books. His publishers, Puffin Books, had worked with Dahl’s estate (now owned by Netflix) to remove references to violence, body size, mental health, gender and skin colour. Now, a new play about an incident in Dahl’s…

AS so often, Roald Dahl (unexpurgated) put it best. In The Twits, prior to its bowdlerisation by Puffin Books, he observed of Mrs Twit: “Have you ever seen a woman with an uglier face than that? I doubt it. But the funny thing is that Mrs Twit wasn’t born ugly.…

PM opposes edits to children’s classics to remove material deemed offensive

Publisher Puffin hired sensitivity readers to rewrite passages to edit out words such as ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’

Augustus Gloop is no longer fat as Puffin Books confirmed it has rewritten the classics, removing references to issues such as weight and mental health

Content deemed offensive, such as references to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race, has been altered.

Critics are accusing the British publisher of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s books of censorship after it removed colorful language from works such as “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Matilda” to make them more acceptable to modern readers