Andart

Suitable reading for the future ruler of the kurrekurreduttans

On Practical Ethics I blog about Ad usum Delphini: should we Bowdlerize children's books?

My basic argument is that Bowdlerization is usually a bad thing (breaches the author's intentions, the artistic integrity of the work and rarely has much effect) but that carefully adjusting children's books might occasionally make sense - mainly where pointless racism or sexism is just due to a book being old. However, the truly problematic books will always escape this and can only be handled by parents and other adults reading and discussing the books *with* the kids.