Children's literature in the news

I took this photo as I passed by a charity shop today.
On the right are a couple of titles by Roald Dahl, to the left several by Enid Blyton and above some books  by David  Walliams.
I don't imagine they were deliberately placed (I could be wrong) - but what a minefield!

Everyone must know about the ongoing debate over whether or not Dahl's stories for children should be purged of their offensive language. The publisher has issued a new set of these well-known stories that omits references to characters being fat or ugly (racist terms had already been removed.) This has produced a huge, mainly negative reaction with the result that a new set of originals has been proposed as well.

Enid Blyton, a hugely successful mid-20th century  writer of children's books and stories, was the  target of criticism and boycotting for decades both on account of racist and sexism and of their  poor literary quality (some libraries refused to stock them).  Her stories remain very popuar with children and the publisher, after revising them in line with modern standards in 2010, reinstated them in their original form a few years later.

There's nothing new about any of this. In 1807 Henrietta and  Thomas   Bowdler produced an edition of Shakespeare's plays in which “those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family” thus freeing Papa from stumbling over embarassing phrases  in mid flow.

But what about David Walliams? He's comedian and TV personality who has become a massively successful children's writer. His books have been translated into 53 languages and he's clearly made a fortune out of them. And yet his behaviour on and off the screen seems  repellent. (Read his Wikipedia entry if you're not up on this.) It makes me want his entire ouevre to be suppressed. I'd much rather see a child reading Blyton or Dahl,  in whichever version, and talk to them about the language used, than try to explain why a man like Walliams is feted as an entertainer.