The rewriting of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s books by woke fanatics is precisely why parents should buy hard copies that will stay unchanged forever, Ben Shapiro said Tuesday.

Editors at Puffin Books, which owns the rights to Dahl’s books, have combed through such classics as “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Matilda,” and “James and the Giant Peach,” to excise terms deemed offensive. Timeless characters the writer described as “fat,” “crazy,” “ugly” or with other objectionable adjectives are now portrayed with milder terms.

“The world censorship regime is here and it is ugly,” said Shapiro, the best-selling author, Daily Wire co-founder, and host of “The Ben Shapiro Show.” “And this is direct from 1984, I mean George Orwell’s “1984.” He said that we were literally going to sit there and rewrite old literature and take out references when to change words.”

Rewriting Roald Dahl to remove the nastiness and meanness removes half the charm of the books. The whole point of the books is that the world is filled with nastiness and meanness, and children have to learn to navigate it in adventurous ways.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) February 21, 2023

Even references to the races, genders, and appearances have been altered, noted Shapiro, who said his children enjoy the books of Dahl, who died in 1992. The idea, according to Puffin officials, is to eliminate language that can be damaging and perpetuate harmful stereotypes.

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“If we are going to do this routine, you’re literally going to just have to wipe out pretty much all literature up till the last five seconds because we have jumped into a brave new world when it comes to our gender and racial politics in which we are apparently not allowed to say that men are different from women,” noted Shapiro.

“And we’re also not allowed to point out anything remotely offensive to anyone or even to read historically stuff that is actually offensive and then say, ‘Yeah, that’s what people thought at the time. That was a bad thing,’” he added. “The fact that they have actively changed the verbiage here is insane.”

Among the changes made to Dahl’s books:

In “Matilda,” “mothers and fathers” became “parents.” “She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling,” became “She went to nineteenth century estates with Jane Austen. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and California with John Steinbeck.”
In “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” this sentence was entirely removed: “Mike Teavee himself had no less than eighteen toy pistols of various sizes hanging from belts around his body, and every now and again he would leap up into the air and fire off half a dozen rounds from one or another of these weapons.”

The key takeaway, Shapiro said, is not to trust the digital version of your favorite classics.

“You [should] buy actual hard copies of things because once the digital copies are there, they can just change them at a moment’s notice,” he said.