An American Jewish children’s author, R L Stine, has become the latest casualty of a trend for publishers to “sensitively” edit his books — only this time, Stine says, it was done without his permission.
Stine is the author of one of the world’s most successful children’s fiction series. His Goosebumps books have sold more than 300 million copies and are the second highest series after JK Rowling’s Harry Potter novels.
Goosebumps were first published in the 1990s and have now been re-released as e-books — but they have been “sanitised”. Writing on Twitter, Stine has attacked his publisher, Scholastic, accusing it of making changes to his work without discussing them with him. He wrote: “I’ve never changed a word in Goosebumps. Any changes were never shown to me.”
The changes are mainly references to mental health and weight, with the removal of words such as “crazy”, exchanged for “silly”. Cultural references which young readers might not understand such as “Walkman” have also been deleted. Characters are described as “cheerful” rather than “plump”.
