I bought my 8 year old daughter the hardcover box set for Christmas. When she opened it her initial reaction was definitely "oh...thanks" (she was clearly not excited about it but wanted to be nice). Within a week it was borderline impossible to get her to put them down and go to sleep at night.
Yeah, our boys read my old C&H collection more than almost any of their modern kids books. Downside, it's inspired all sorts of mischievous ideas.
Roald Dahl, too, and the Uncle series. These old books have more of an edge to them that our kids seem to light up at, and I've had a hard time finding modern equivalents. Most of the modern kids books seem too saccharine/sterile by comparison. Maybe it's just survivorship bias, these are just the old books that people bothered to keep reading.
Yeah. Ronald Dahl once said something to the effect that to make a good children’s book the first thing you have to do is kill off the parents!
Sometimes by having a rhinoceros suddenly and unceremoniously gobble them up.
Sadly the same happened to modern publications of Enid Blyton. Best to find old editions.
And Dahl’s foundation or whatever it’s called had the audacity to try to rewrite the books; removing references to people as ugly, or fat, etc.
You don’t get to rewrite books because they make you feel uncomfortable. Don’t read them. Even Disney has had the common sense to not alter the problematic parts of its films, they just issue a warning at the beginning that it doesn’t represent their current values.
Ah yeah, I heard about that, I think we have the older edition. I think it's fine to just stop and provide some parental commentary about it - it can be a good forcing function for talking about that stuff.
Hopefully they didn't take out the Oompa Loompa's judgemental songs, the kids find those hilarious. The humor's the sugar that makes the moral tale about how to be and not to be in the world go down - don't be a glutton, don't be greedy, try to be humble, kind, and empathetic like Charlie. It's not actually about superficial traits.
> Even Disney has had the common sense to not alter the problematic parts of its films
True, Disney don't merely alter them..... they bury them!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah
Exact same story here. I got my father in law the box set as a gift, and when my daughter was about seven she started reading them when we were visiting them. So I bought her a set of her own. She still reads them all the time at 11.