Don’t mess with the graves of dead writers.

Each writer lives on in their works, long after the writer is gone.

We can feel their presence in every page; their character, thoughts, quirks, and the times in which they lived.

Over time some works – and therefore their authors – die a natural death. They fall into obscurity, a cultural event of interest only to historians.

The best works, the ones which speak to the heart of humanity, live a long, long life.

Roald Dahl spoke to the truths that children know. One was that no matter how unattractive a person was, if they were of a loving and generous character, we perceive them as beautiful. No matter how pretty, we perceive horrible people as ugly.

He wrote in a way that very few could: To children so they could enjoy and appreciate what is being said. Dahl would speak to their heart on their level, scrabbling about in the muck that is a child’s life, not preaching at them from up on high.

Is it dated? Yes. It was in a time when children were spanked and sent to their room without supper. As a result, these fictional children were treated poorly, and as we move out of the age of that being commonplace, the emotional stakes in reading about that seem to rise even higher.

Without that context, the difficulty now is for children to not see the justice or injustice of each fate that befell the children in these stories. The daughter of one mother I know was read one of Dahl’s stories in which children were punished for something they had done. She was horrified that any negative repercussions were enacted upon children, called it abuse and couldn’t move on to appreciate the rest of the story.

Has our culture shifted? Will Dahl be a product of his time and appeal to an ever-shrinking readership? Or will his brutal descriptions and harsh punishments become ever more prominent in the absence of them in our real lives?

As brutal as a few sensitive readers might think his stories are, to others they are exactly what they need to hear. If we edit Dahl, change his ideas, make them less repugnant to some, his works will lose value to everyone.

Dahl held the opinion that no change, not so much as a single comma, is to be altered. “When I am gone, if that happens, then I’ll wish mighty Thor knocks very hard on their heads with his Mjolnir. Or I will send along the ‘enormous crocodile’ to gobble them up.”

Yet here we are, with Puffin looking to adulterate his works for no better reason than ‘to protect children’. From ideas that some very badly need to hear, and leave us with bland, beige and ‘safe’ reading with no edge at all. Are you sure you are protecting anyone, Puffin?

If Dahl’s works eventually fade away, into obscurity, then let them. If the ghost of the author should eventually pass, give him the death he deserves, proudly, with his works intact. With the appeal that Dahl has had over generations, he deserves better than to have someone who can’t come up with an original thought of their own shake their finger, adulterate his works and release them under his name.

Write your own works. Don’t rob the grave and our culture.