Roald Dahl is an esteemed children’s author who is known for his books, James and the Giant Peach, and, Matilda. His books are beloved by children and adults around the world, but now they are under fire. 

His most popular book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is being attacked by the editors for featuring words that could be offensive to different people. The main word they are editing out of the book is “fat.” This word was used to describe the character of Augustus Gloop, an enormously large German kid who is supposed to represent greed and gluttony. His main character trait was the fact that he was fat. 

The publisher Penguin Random House is removing the word so they can make the books more “inclusive.” This doesn’t make the book more inclusive, if anything this could make fat people feel worse about their state of being. I think this could be the beginning of a future that leads to books being edited because they have very minor words that only a specific set of people would be offended by. If this keeps going, authors won’t be able to express themselves correctly because this could make them afraid of what words they would be allowed to use in their stories.