Tell me what you really think.
I agree with you 100%! Here from Michele tonight!
Me, too! What's next they will change Little House on the Prairie to Big House in the Suburbs? I didn't even know this was a trend. What the hell are they thinking? I love the post script, by the way!
My oldest still likes The Hardy Boys, but always chuckles at how the friend (can't remember his name) is constantly described as their "portly friend", or hefty, chunky, maybe even (horrors) "fat"! Yes, and that teaches him how times have changed. Very cool. Have you read CS Lewis's The Abolition of Man? Amazing vision about literature and education.
Wow, as both a librarian and a children's lit enthusiast, this whole idea is pretty alarming. Is this something you've discovered by reading new editions, or is there some sort of website that talks about it? I'm curious to find out more.
You tell 'em! I was reading before I started school and I love my books. If they want more modern stuff, let them do a spin-off. Say, maybe Nancy Drew's granddaughter or the Hardy Boys family reunion.
Tough scheiss, indeed!
Hands off CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN and BELLES ON THEIR TOES ;~), the Moffat books, the Melendy series, the Betsy-Tacy series, HEIDI and HEIDI GROWS UP, too, please!
Mamacita-I'm reading Robert Browning's THE PIED PIPER OF HAMLIN (illustrated by Kate Greenaway!) to my tots just now. Oh, the joys of sharing fine poetry with children!
I agree! Books, movies, anything. Don't change it, kids are not stupid. They know things change, and "updating" a book just destroys it. I don't see anyone out there re-writing Shakespeare for idiot adults! (Okay, they tried to make the movie, but all that turned into was a film of Leo shouting his lines).
I tell my kids that books are time machines. Modernizing and other supposed spiffing up cuts off that pipeline to the past -- and if you don't know where you've been, you can't figure out where you're going. Literature is a good way to see where we as a culture have been so that we can look toward where we want to be going.
Amen, sister! As always, telling it like it is.
My little revolt against this trend will be buying the wonderful, original texts and turning up my nose while passing nearby the "corrected" versions. How could Little Women need revision???
*****STANDING OVATION!!!!!!!**************
Something that came up in a "recreational thinking" talk with my old Dungeonmaster (D&D, NOT BDSM)about which books/films/shows had shown staying power:
Him: "Nothing gets stale faster than over-relevance."
Me: "Except PRETENTIOUS over-relevance."
Loud applaud from Mia who spent YEARS as a professional nanny reading to children everyday. LEAVE THE BOOKS ALONE!!!
Good grief I didn't know they were doing that! As a child (in the early 80's) most of the "older" books were my favorites because they took me to another era. I loved that, and still do.
PC freaks have death grip on our educational system. We'll never get shut of them - this is only advantage they have, and they wield it to its full potential. Eating our kids' minds up with equivocating lowest-common-denominator bullshit.
Is there an online article somewhere to support this move by the publishers? Or was it found in a recent trip to the bookstore? Just wondering.
You might find it interesting to drive by Nancy Drew's old high school in Gary Indiana. Do so during daylight hours, in a reliable but not too expensive automobile.
I find it really ironic that you chose to hold up Harry Potter as a book to emulate, saying "Are you planning to dumb down and Americanize those, eventually?" the irony occurs in that the first Harry Potter novel WAS Americanized : the Brittish and Canadian title was "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" It was decided that the title should be changed for the States to the Sorcerer's Stone as the publisher's didn`t think children would understand that the Philosopher's Stone refers to an old legend. Even the American movie was reshot for every scene in which reference was made to the stone.
So here's a serious question. The first time I read Kipling's Just So Stories to Elder Offspring, I remembered halfway through How The Leopard Changed His Spots that the "n"-word appears at story's end. (Kipling was an Englishman of his times.) I made a quick decision to read it straight, then talk about it afterwards.
Since then, I've checked the Kiplings in the children's section of bookstores, and discovered that most of them omit or alter that sentence. Nothing else appears to be changed. So what about situations like this, where it's not an integral part of the work (as is the "n"-word in Twain's books)? Are originals always sacrosanct? My primal position is, yes they are; but then, often "originals" are changed significantly in their own times, as with The Swiss Family Robinson, which had no "pure" English version even in its own day.
Given that tampering with children's writings is a centuries-old tradition, is it anachronistic to get purist about it now, for the sake of being traditional? Is it reasonable to have multiple Nancy Drews, the way there were multiple Robinson Crusoes?
I'm in with you! I can't stand all the editing from Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew... all edited and re-edited, then chopped up and shredded to pieces... they no longer look or talk or even act the way the originals did, not to mention live in a totally different space and time... and it's confusing to figure out which editions are edited and which are not as none are labelled as such... Drives me MAD!! and those Applewood Books are very expensive, but seem to be the only alternative to hunting down original copies. Grrrr!
Commenting by HaloScan
