RL Stine revises his GOOSEBUMPS book series to change negative references to race, weight and mental health

Famous children’s thriller writer RL Stine he’s following the lead of many other authors and publications, as he’s revising many of his older novels to edit the negative references to ethnicity, weight, and mental health. The move from Scholastic comes after Penguin hired Sensitivity readers for editing Roald DalBooks with language deemed inappropriate in today’s world.

However, there has been so much backlash to Penguin’s move that the publisher said it would make unedited versions of Dahl’s books available later this year under the banner “The Roald Dahl Classic Collection,” giving readers the ability to choose which one to read.

Deadline reports that the difference with respect to what is happening with Goose bumps is that the original author is making the changes himself, e Times reports that over 100 changes have been made to children’s horror novels. An example of a revision that was done was in a book where aliens abducted large people where in the original book they were described as having “at least six minds”, the revised version now says people are “at least six feet and six”.

In a 1998 reissue of the title The bride of the living mannequin, the ventriloquist dummy Slappy knocks a girl unconscious with a “love shot”, but the villain now uses a spell. In the 1996 book Attack of the Jack-O’-Lanterns, a character is described as “tall and good looking, with dark brown eyes and a big warm smile. Lee is African American and he preens when he walks and acts really cool, like the rappers in MTV videos. The revised version now calls the character “tall and good looking, with brown skin, dark brown eyes and a big warm smile. He kind of struts around when he walks around and acts really cool.

In The Curse of Camp Cold Lake since 1997 the boys at the summer camp are no longer described as making “a loud wolf whistle” and are now said to have “loudly whistled”. That same year I live in your basement! was published where the novel’s protagonist asks, “Did he really expect me to be his slave – forever?” The protagonist now asks, “Did he really expect me to do this – forever?”

In Say Cheese and Die – Again!, female students were described as having “hots” for the principal, but that row has now been deleted. In Do not go to sleep!called a boy Anna Karenina “girly stuff” but now she says it’s “not interesting”.

What do you think of these changes that have been made?