Judy Blume, the Making of Western Film and Culture: Growing Up in Key West, Fla. When Reagan Went Here, When We Were Closed

Editor’s Note: Sara Stewart is a film and culture writer who lives in western Pennsylvania. The author does not have to explain his own views here. There are more opinions on CNN.

These women spoke about how the books changed them, making them feel seen and understood in a way that their parents didn’t. There were a lot of issues that came up in Blume’s work. There are menstrual periods and religion in Margaret. masturbation, scoliosis and controlling parents in “Deenie.” Teen sex in “Forever,” which Blume says she wrote because her daughter wanted to read a book about high schoolers who, unlike virtually most of canonical Western literature’s characters, had sex outside wedlock and didn’t come to a tragic end.

The documentary shows interviews with some of the author’s more famous fans, including Molly Ringwald, who is one of the most devoted followers of the author. It also showcases her correspondence with now-adult women who wrote to Blume, initially, as teenagers – and she wrote back, beginning friendships that would last decades.

You think that the author would have been able to live in her home of Key West. As Matthew McConaughey once said, time is a flat circle. In her memoir, Judy Blume recalls a time when her career changed due to the election of Ronald Reagan.

The Disappearance of Shere Hite at the 50th Festival of Books & Books at the Studios of Key West: A Conversation with Roald Dahl

There was a lot of attention on the topic of author censorship at the festival. “The Disappearance of Shere Hite” is about the author of 1976’s “The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality,” a groundbreaking survey of women that concluded the female orgasm was a lot less elusive than had been previously discussed – mostly due to faulty or nonexistent understanding of women’s sexual pleasure. Hite was savaged by the Christian right after he was criticized for being a man-hater.

Hite died in 2020 in London, after years of persecution for her work. But Blume is still fighting the good fight. She is the co-founder of a Key West store, Books & Books @ the Studios of Key West (affiliated with a local Florida chain of beloved independent bookstores), where the shelves bear signs proclaiming, “We Sell Banned Books.”

I hope the book banning contingent will heed her words, as they often don’t read the books before trying to remove them. Maybe I won’t.

Roald Dahl “was no angel,” as author Salman Rushdie put it, even as he blasted Dahl’s publishers for censoring his books. Dahl, who died in 1990, made anti-Semitic statements. Some of his books have been called out for being racist.

Dahl died in 1990 at the age of 74 after writing children’s books and stories that have been translated into 68 languages. He wrote some books that became classic movies. His book Matilda was just recently made into a musical film for Netflix and premiered last year.

The Indian-born author’s “The witches” and “The role of the Roald Dahl Story Company” were removed from the Daily Telegraph

The author has long been seen as controversial and his estate apologized for antisemitic comments made in his lifetime.

The organization Inclusive Minds was formed to change the face of children’sbooks by changing the way they are written.

In a lengthy report published on Saturday, British newspaper The Daily Telegraph revealed that it had found hundreds of changes across the author’s many children’s books. Close analysis by its journalists revealed that language relating to gender, race, weight, mental health and violence had been cut or rewritten. This included removing words such as “fat” and “ugly,” as well as descriptions using the colors black and white.

Journalists working on the piece found 59 changes in “The Witches” alone, with hundreds more discovered in Dahl’s other popular books, such as “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Matilda.”

Rushdie is in the middle of a debate about freedom of expression. Following the release of his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses,” the then-Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the his death. The Indian-born author lost the sight in one eye after being attacked at a lecture in New York last year.

The Prime Minister agrees with the BFG that you shouldn’t censor children’s books, according to Sunak’s spokesman, when asked if it is right to censor children’s books.

The spokesperson added that “it’s important that works of literature and fiction are preserved and not airbrushed,” and said: “We’ve always defended the right to free speech and expression.”

Puffin and The Roald Dahl Story Company, which manages the copyrights of Dahl’s books and works with publishers, didn’t respond to NPR’s requests for comment.

Comment on ‘Measurement of a Woman’s Wrong During a Great Adventure in a Wreath”

She said that the organization was alarmed by the changes, which had been made in “a purported effort to scrub the books of that which might offend someone.”

She wrote: “If we start down the path of trying to correct for perceived slights instead of allowing readers to receive and react to books as written, we risk distorting the work of great authors and clouding the essential lens that literature offers on society.”

He highlighted the fact that whatever changes might be made today, millions of older editions are circulating in schools, libraries, second-hand stores and elsewhere.

The character Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is no longer called “fat.” He is described as an “enormous” person.

The language that is not originally written by Dahl has been added to the books. In his 1983 book, The Witches, he writes that witches are bald. According to The Telegraph, an added line in new editions says, “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”

What is a Little Flop? The Case of Augustus Gloop, from the Dark Side of the Chocolate Factory to Charlie and the Giant Peach

Editor’s Note: Holly Thomas is a writer and editor based in London. She works atKatie Couric Media. She tweets @HolstaT. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. View more opinion on CNN.

The enthusiastic refrain of people who habitually say whatever they please has received an injection of credibility.

It is not bad that the idea is new. Remember the Oompa Loompas, the live-in workforce Willy Wonka trafficked from the “deepest and darkest part of the African jungle” in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”? They were called black pygmies in the original version. After the 1971 movie, his rewrite said that they were a little fantasy creatures. A welcome improvement, I’m sure we can agree.

The posthumous remake has gone much further. The monstrous tractors in “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” which we can safely assume did not come from “darkest Africa,” are no longer “black.” The earthworm in “James and the Giant Peach” isn’t pink, doesn’t have “lovely pink” skin but “lovely smooth skin.” No one is “pale,” Mrs. Silver, of “Esio Trot,” is “kind,” not “attractive,” and the word “fat” has been exorcised across the board.

At best, the effect has been to add a little harmless balance to the books. Making the Small Foxes in “Fantastic Mr. Fox” female rather than male has no material effect on the narrative or prose. But many of the changes obfuscate the intended meaning. The worst of them serve to reinforce prejudices, rather than banish them.

Take Augustus Gloop, from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” A description of him in the 2001 edition was that he looked like he had been blown up by a powerful pump. The version of the book in 2022 shows a nine year old boy who was so large he looked like he’d been blown up. It also adapts “Great flabby folds of fat bulged out from every part of his body, and his face was like a monstrous ball of dough,” to “Great folds bulged out from every part of his body, and his face was like a ball of dough.”

The reader is not affected by the edits to Augustus Gloop. He is not a normal child. Words such as “fat” are offensive and misdiagnosing the problem. “Fat” is — or ought to be — a neutral descriptor, and it’s being reclaimed as such by fat activists and writers. It reactivates a taboo and implies that there is something embarrassing about it in particular, so removing it makes it seem like a bigger deal.

This retroactive application of shame rears it’s head again in “The Witches.” In one paragraph describing the witches’ dedication to hunting children no matter what they’re up to, a sentence has been changed from “Even if she is working as a cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman” to “Even if she is working as a top scientist or running a business.” In Dahl’s day, women were less likely to do certain jobs than they are now, and we can accept in good faith that things have changed for the better. Everyone type their own emails here. Many people still work as cashiers. The upgrade to a top scientist is intended as an upgrade, but also carries a trace of snobbery.

Had the updates been written poorly, they might not have flown under the radar. In “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “Each man will have a gun and a flashlight” has become “Each person will have a person and a flashlight.” The original quote was, “Badger sat down and put a paw around his small son.” It’s thought that one would be more offended by an editor who was unable to avoid unnecessary repetition as he would be by the inference of sexism.

More to the point, this recurrent clumsiness indicates a less discerning eye for detail than one would hope for from the arbiters of correctness. Why can’t Mrs. Silver be attractive? Is it possible to say that attractiveness is solely physical and that being attractive and kind is mutually exclusive? The implication that things are true flattens the edges of the writing, and erases some of the nuances that give a character depth. In some cases, the quest for seemliness strips some of the meaning from the words. The line “Look at you!” that describes the effects of George’s medicine is not found in the newer version of the book. You’re standing up all on your own and you’re not even using a stick!” Look at you! You’re full of beans!”

There is something crazy about how many alterations were made to books about fruit and talking insects. Whatever Dahl’s place in the annals of 20th-century children’s fiction, it is striking that these culture war arguments somehow always revolve around authors like him and Dr. Seuss; one is forced to confront the distinctly horrifying possibility that “If I Ran the Zoo” and “James and the Giant Peach” are the only books that millions of Anglophone readers have ever actually finished. The changes to the books were first seen a year ago, and should show us something about the amount of attention brought to books that sell tens of thousands of copies each year.

For readers who aren’t fond of tweaking their favorite tales, Penguin Random House children’s in the UK have a new collection called The Roald Dahl Classic Collection. It’s described as 17 titles that “will sit alongside the newly released Puffin Roald Dahl books for young readers, which are designed for children who may be navigating written content independently for the first time.”

“Hearts” at PEN America: Nossel’s View on Dahl’s Contribution to the Non-Relativistic Massacres of the Holocaust

This week’s debate and the subsequent outcome is “heartening” for Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America. “One thing that was striking about this debate over the last week is that there is a fair amount of unity, not total unity, but a fair amount of consensus that Nossel tells NPR that this is not the right answer to be offended by. People would rather deal with the work in its original than have someone else do it, even if they’re not all that fond of it.

Dahl’s mean-spiritedness and mischievous nature can be seen as part of his books’ appeal. Words with a “horsey face” or “idiots” were the least of his offenses.