Huge Book Publisher Does Damage Control After Decision To Rewrite Author’s Words Sparks Backlash

After facing a week of backlash over its decision to rewrite portions of Roald Dahl’s books to make them more inclusive, Puffin will continue to keep the author’s original text in print, the company announced Friday.

Puffin will still keep the new version of the text, which swaps out potentially offensive words like “fat” and adds additional passages to make the stories more palatable to modern readers, but will keep publishing the original text under the name “The Roald Dahl Classic Collection,” according to the announcement. Readers will now “be free to choose,” the company said.

Among the hundreds of changes previously unveiled by Puffin, the publisher axed adjectives from descriptions, making Oompa-Loompas just “small” instead of “no higher than my knee,” removed gender references, redubbing James and the Giant Peach’s “Cloud-Men” as “Cloud-People,” and inserted new content, clarifying after a paragraph in The Witches explaining that witches wear wigs because they are bald that, “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that,” the Telegraph reported.