FORGOTTEN HISTORY: Puffin books | History Defined

Children's Books Pulled After 'Spy Dog' Website Links to Explicit Content — How Did This Happen?

Puffin Books withdraws 'Spy Dog' series from UK shelves after an outdated website link inside children's books leads to explicit content.

International Business Times UK · Oct 16, 2025

Giant: John Lithgow’s masterful turn explores Roald Dahl’s antisemitism – and wider questions about children’s literature

Back in 2023, a bitter debate erupted over the editing of Roald Dahl’s children’s books. His publishers, Puffin Books, had worked with Dahl’s estate (now owned by Netflix) to remove references to violence, body size, mental health, gender and skin colour. Now, a new play about an incident in Dahl’s…

The Conversation · May 16, 2025

OPINION - Censoring children’s books is an insult to their intelligence

AS so often, Roald Dahl (unexpurgated) put it best. In The Twits, prior to its bowdlerisation by Puffin Books, he observed of Mrs Twit: “Have you ever seen a woman with an uglier face than that? I doubt it. But the funny thing is that Mrs Twit wasn’t born ugly.…

Evening Standard · Mar 27, 2023

Rishi Sunak says ‘don’t gobblefunk with language’ as he slams ‘airbrushing’ of Roald Dahl

PM opposes edits to children’s classics to remove material deemed offensive

The Independent UK · Feb 20, 2023

Why are Roald Dahl’s books being rewritten?

Publisher Puffin hired sensitivity readers to rewrite passages to edit out words such as ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’

Evening Standard · Feb 20, 2023

Race, weight and gender stripped out of Roald Dahl books to avoid offence

Augustus Gloop is no longer fat as Puffin Books confirmed it has rewritten the classics, removing references to issues such as weight and mental health

Wales Online · Feb 20, 2023

Salman Rushdie condemns ‘absurd censorship’ after Roald Dahl’s books rewritten

Content deemed offensive, such as references to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race, has been altered.

The Independent UK · Feb 19, 2023

Critics reject changes to Roald Dahl books as censorship

Critics are accusing the British publisher of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s books of censorship after it removed colorful language from works such as “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Matilda” to make them more acceptable to modern readers

The Independent UK · Feb 19, 2023