ThaNks for reposting, Amy. Read the book when I was a child. Loved it.

They now sell the "Chronicles of Narnia" out of order, and the "Little House" books with the racism whitewashed (so to speak) out.

I think it is when a DVD of Sesame Street episodes from the 70s comes with parental warnings and should not be viewed by younger children!

Political correctness the new censorship.

When I was a kid, circa early 1970's, our teacher used to read us Little Black Sambo and the Tigers, complete with illustrations.

My mother-in-law has Little Black Sambo, Eric.

I was at the used book store the other day, looking for a Hansel and Gretel book for Baby A. I'm taking her to a ballet performance of it next month, and wanted her to know the story ahead of time. While I was there I picked up a couple of Curious George stories, too. The lady at the checkout counter mentioned that a woman had recently returned a vintage copy of the original Curious George because, in it, George smokes a cigar (or maybe it's a pipe.) Uhhhgg! Why, why, why? (I have that same old copy, also from the used book store.)

I wish I could find an old copy of Disney's "Song of the South." My grandmother had the book and the movie, and it was one of my favorites as a kid. Now that I've mentioned it, "That's what Uncle Remus Said" is stuck in my head.

Anyone else catch Maurice Sendak opining about children's literature w Colbert? Priceless!
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/406902/january-25-2012/grim-colberty-tales-with-maurice-sendak-pt--2

Loved Song of the South! Just looked it up on Amazon- $89.95 on VHS tape!! I guess I can't afford to be racist any more.

This sort of thing isn't new. Thomas Bowdler published The Family Shakespeare in 1807, the original Grimm's Fairy Tales were sanitized within the brothers' lifetimes, etc.

There are copies of Walt Disney's Uncle Remus Stories, including the 1947 first edition, on Amazon & Abebooks for those willing to fork over some serious cash. The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris is just $ 23.10 on Amazon. Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah!

Thanks for posting, Amy!

Ah, Song of the South. It's funny that Disney's afraid to release the film their freaking theme song came from. And that's the first time I've heard about editing the Little House books, NicoleK... crazy.

Blocking stuff like this just deprives both kids and adults of the opportunity to think for themselves. Why not learn from history instead of whitewashing it? Dirty though it may be, it's a quintessential part of any work of art. Consider Gone with the Wind--the movie is certainly racist, but I don't think it even comes close to the book, in all its the-KKK-heroically-defends-our-women ugliness. How can we change a word?

"Scary Stories" was a coming of age rite when I was a kid! I saw the new ones when we got them in and I was broken-hearted. I have a vivid memory of lying awake for an hour at a sleepover after we read a few of those!
"Scary Stories" has been at the top of the Banned Book List for years, though, so I can't say I'm too shocked. Parents these days are way more sensitive.

NicoleK, what do you mean by selling the Narnia books out of order? We haven't ordered new copies in a while, but the ones we have are in order by which they should be read (not necessarily published). But I wasn't aware that there was any controversy involving those.

As for Little Black Sambo, I think it's sad that a cute story has been tainted by the way in which it was used to denigrate blacks. We have a gorgeous copy of the story (in which, to sum up, a little boy outsmarts a tiger), but I can never put it on display or recommend it. I'm actually surprised we're still allowed to have it on the shelves.

Ever wonder if the fairy tales you read as a child were accurately translated, un-Bowdlerised?

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spok/grimmtmp/

They've begun publishing them with The Magicians Nephew in slot #1, Which is a tragedy in my opinion, it sucks all of they mystery out of the charcheters in LWW

People who advocate MN as being the first book to read point out a letter CS lewis wrote in response to a boy asking the question

They fail to understand the boy was young, had already read ther book numerous times and was in a fight with his mother and Lewis sided with the kid (big shocker there)

You can tell quite a bit about a cultre base on the stories it tells its children to teach lessons and ideals.

As for Scary Stories, the stories never really frightened me, those pictures though. Christ, those thing were creepy

Just saw the Maurice Sendak \ Colbert interview. LOVED IT! there is something so charming about individuals that hate people so much.

I remember reading my boy In The Night Kitchen and seeing the video about 100 times. Now I find out people out there have censored the book for the two seconds you can see an undeveloped penis? It wouldn't have ever ccurred to me, and is frankly really sad to me anyone could be so pervertedly Puritanical.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTSBAADKHBk

PS- Sendak was with his gay lover for 50 years. How could anyone with a conscious deny this man the right to marry the person he may have wanted to?

I have a full, new set of Harry Potter novels because somebody objected to Harry saving his friends from evil with a wand instead of a cross.

Thanks, anonymous, fearful, probably Baptist lady. You saved me over $100!

Now I enjoy telling the devout that Adam and Eve spoke Parseltongue. You should see the struggle when I point out that "...snakes can't speak English, but people can make hissing noises. It's just logical!"

You can tell quite a bit about a cultre base on the stories it tells its children to teach lessons and ideals.

As for Scary Stories, the stories never really frightened me, those pictures though. Christ, those thing were creepy

I won't buy Harry Potter on principal, b/c the vocabulary was dumbed down for the American version. I've never seen the movies either, but that's because the first one bored me to tears till I turned it off. I'm a Tolkien and Martin girl.

My older girls are 7. last year, they got really into the Civil and Revolutionary Wars (Thank you magic Treehouse Series!) and so I bought them books about it, that weren't too baby for their reading level. Turns out the books had photos of huge piles of bodies. They asked me about it, but it didn't seem to unduly bother them. Having truly advanced readers at a young age has some challenges, with finding them things to read that aren't just way inappropriate. One picked The Odyssey (youth version) at the store the other day. I was way proud. They also really love Christopher Pikes, which can be scary. I'll have to check out Scary Stories, the old version, for them!

When I was growing up from about age three or four I was exposed to "Where the wild things are". I bought a copy for my then stepdaughter. She put it away because her three or four child freaked out.

"I won't buy Harry Potter on principal, b/c the vocabulary was dumbed down for the American version."

principle*

And I'm sure you have examples...

Momof4, is changing a few British usages to American ones--"queue" to "line", "toilet" to "bathroom" and the like--really dumbing down? I guess a little. Certainly unnecessary from the American publisher. But I've read both editions, it's hardly noticeable, and they do it less and less with each book. I get it, you're standing for a principle. Still, they're really fine books, bet your girls would love them. And there must be British and Canadian editions floating around.

Christopher Pike, ah. Such memories. Have they read Mary Downing Hahn? There's a ton of great youth fiction by her, some of it spooky, all of it nice, serious coming of age stuff... and I'm getting nostalgic now.

I still have a few of Pike's books in my collection, Sati is I think his best work. He managed to describe a type of deity that I would like to believe exists.

You know what a great childrens book is, The Westing Game. Murder, mystery, the movie they tried to make of it was a fucking train wreck, but the book is a gem

Christopher Pike?

Beep.

Beep.

That delta radiation messed him up.

>> You know what a great childrens book is?

Black and Blue Magic
The Pigman
The Pippi Longstocking series

When I was growing up there was a series aqbout a team of scuba divers who traveled the world looking for sunken pirate ships. It was about 20 or 30 books, but I can't remember the name of the series or the author... any help?

As long as were asking for help, I recall a book, some guy wa helping 2 children for 'our world' search for something in his. Might have been their parents I dont know.

All I recall of it was they were being chased by something and they had a river boat powered by jokes

the original Grimm's Fairy Tales were sanitized within the brothers' lifetimes

Posted by: Martin at February 8, 2012 10:09 AM

Are you referring to the fact that even the brothers themselves sanitized stories?

Example: While there are two somewhat different endings for Rapunzel, almost ALL versions have her giving away the prince's existence by mentioning him directly. However, in a very old version - pre-Grimm? - the witch finds out when Rapunzel says: "Why are my clothes getting tight? They don't seem to fit anymore."

They've begun publishing them with The Magicians Nephew in slot #1, Which is a tragedy in my opinion, it sucks all of they mystery out of the charcheters in LWW
_____________________

I agree it's a tragedy. And thank goodness the movie producers had the sense to do LWW first!

I can't believe how the dissenters ignore what gets lost, intellectually and spiritually, from the Professor's speech if you read MN first. I've always loved this beautiful speech, since it is, after all, the mark of a very rare, possibly unique adult character in a fantasy where "real world" adults never get to see the fantasy world, after all.
______________________

People who advocate MN as being the first book to read point out a letter CS lewis wrote in response to a boy asking the question

They fail to understand the boy was young, had already read ther book numerous times and was in a fight with his mother and Lewis sided with the kid (big shocker there)

Posted by: lujlp at February 8, 2012 2:00 PM
_____________________

Got a link for that letter?

I remember reading my boy In The Night Kitchen and seeing the video about 100 times. Now I find out people out there have censored the book for the two seconds you can see an undeveloped penis? It wouldn't have ever ccurred to me, and is frankly really sad to me anyone could be so pervertedly Puritanical.

Posted by: Eric at February 8, 2012 2:17 PM

Even LIBRARIANS drew diapers on the kid! Sendak got mad, of course, and reportedly bought every such copy he could get his hands on. Not sure why - after all, it would be easy enough for anyone to deface new copies.

I got to meet him some years ago and asked him if anyone had ever complained to him about the book ASIDE from the illustrations. He said no. I then told him how my mother considered getting it for my brother when he was 6, and she didn't blink at the pictures, but when she read the last page, which says "and that's why, thanks to Mickey, we have cake every morning" she put it down and said "THIS is out of the question."

(She was quite right - my brother WOULD have screamed for cake every morning.)

When I was growing up there was a series aqbout a team of scuba divers who traveled the world looking for sunken pirate ships. It was about 20 or 30 books, but I can't remember the name of the series or the author... any help?

Posted by: Eric at February 9, 2012 8:51 AM

Sure you're not thinking of "The Three Investigators"? They find pirate gold in "The Secret of Skeleton Island."

Here is a quote from the wiki article - I've seen it on other boards but I cnat seem to find the wholet thing today

To make the case for his suggested order, Gresham quoted Lewis' 1957 reply to a letter from an American fan who was having an argument with his mother about the order:

I think I agree with your [chronological] order for reading the books more than with your mother's. The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks. When I wrote The Lion I did not know I was going to write any more. Then I wrote P. Caspian as a sequel and still didn't think there would be any more, and when I had done The Voyage I felt quite sure it would be the last, but I found I was wrong. So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone read them. I’m not even sure that all the others were written in the same order in which they were published.[18]

In the 2005 Harper Collins adult editions of the books, the publisher cites this letter to assert Lewis' preference for the numbering they adopted by including this notice on the copyright page:

Although The Magician's Nephew was written several years after C. S. Lewis first began The Chronicles of Narnia, he wanted it to be read as the first book in the series. Harper Collins is happy to present these books in the order which Professor Lewis preferred.

Paul Ford cites several scholars who have weighed in against this view,[19] and continues, "most scholars disagree with this decision and find it the least faithful to Lewis's deepest intentions".[2] Scholars and readers who appreciate the original order believe that Lewis was simply being gracious to his youthful correspondent and that he could have changed the books' order in his lifetime had he so desired.[20] They maintain that much of the magic of Narnia comes from the way the world is gradually presented in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. These academics believe that the mysterious wardrobe, as a narrative device, is a much better introduction to Narnia than The Magician's Nephew — where the word "Narnia" appears in the first paragraph as something already familiar to the reader. Moreover, they say, it is clear from the texts themselves that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was intended to be read first. When Aslan is first mentioned in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, for example, the narrator says that "None of the children knew who Aslan was, any more than you do" — which is nonsensical if one has already read The Magician's Nephew.[21] Other similar textual examples are also cited.[22]