Abridged Too Far

Abridging and "simplifying" children's literature is one of my absolute pet peeves, and this article amply illustrates why. Sure, plowing through some of the Victorian speech in, say, "A Little Princess" is annoying at best and tongue-twisting at worst (this being our recent difficult read-aloud). But to denude the language and strip the stories is to rob your kids of the thing itself.

It's why I disapprove of "cruelty-free" versions of fairy tales; I wait to tell the more violent ones to the girls until they're older, but I give them the originals. At our house, the evil stepmother in Snow White comes to the ball and dances in red-hot shoes til she dies. "Little Princess" Sara Crewe's father really is dead (unlike the Shirley Temple version, where he's found in the end). In "The Secret Garden," Mary Lennox's parents ignore her and don't want her, and she is found alone in the house forgotten after everyone has died of cholera. Aslan is tortured and dies in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."