You may remember not long ago some heated discussion about HarperCollins retouching an author photograph of Clement Hurd in a new edition of the children’s classic Goodnight Moon to remove a cigarette from the image. The NYT ran an amusing piece about other "dangers" to be found in Hurd’s illustrations. In the same vein, I came across this utterly fascinating Flickr photoset detailing the changes between a 1963 edition of Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever and the 1991 edition.
Most of the revisions are fairly innocuous and appear to be well intentioned. But as I was paging through the images I was overcome by a sense of nostalgia and even a bit of loss (I loved Richard Scarry as a child, and surely pored over the Best Word Book - though I have no idea if it was the documented 1963 edition. It’s likely that it was). In part because it drove home just how different a world my daughter will be growing up in from the one I knew—certainly one more sensitive to cultural concerns.
My impressions are that children’s literature is vastly improved from the "old days" of my youth, though it does seem much more self-consciously "educational." Of course, I would think twice about reading my daughter a book with a "beautiful screaming lady" being rescued by a "brave hero" [male firefighter], as the 1963 Scarry does.
But what (if anything) do we lose in the translation? Do we lose the value of the original texts as cultural artifacts? To be responsible moderns do we have to continually "revise" the classics? At what point do they cease to be "classics" and become some new thing altogether?
[cross-posted to Metaxu Café] [Flickr photoset found via What's In Rebecca's Pocket?]
