One of the world’s most successful children’s book authors has accused his publisher of censoring his work without his permission.
RL Stine, whose Goosebumps series has sold more than 300 million copies and is the second best-selling book series after Harry Potter, said Monday that the books had been sanitized without his knowledge.
Publisher Scholastic has made more than 100 edits, changing words like “chubby” to “cheerful” and replacing “crazy” with “silly.”
Scholastic insisted the changes were necessary to protect the mental health of young people, but Stine said he was not consulted.
“The stories are not true,” the Ohio-born author tweeted, in response to a reader who complained about the edits.
‘I’ve never changed a word in Goosebumps. No change was ever shown to me.’
RL Stine’s Goosebumps series (pictured) has sold more than 300 million books worldwide. On Monday he denied censoring his books.
The move came after it became known that Roald Dahl’s books had been rewritten, causing an uproar among his followers.
The Penguin publishers were forced to publish a “classic” edition of the books, which were not changed.
Goosebumps became a huge hit with teens in the 1990s, selling around four million copies a month at the peak of its success.
Stine, 79, has written 62 books in the series and has previously described how he can write a book in six days.
The franchise spawned a 2015 film starring Jack Black, which grossed $158 million at the box office.
The Scholastic changes, first reported by The timesincluded the removal of a reference to fat people with ‘at least six potatoes’ being abducted by aliens.
The Revised Version now says that people are ‘at least six foot six’ tall.
In a reissue of the 1998 title Bride of the Living Dummy, the ventriloquist dummy Slappy knocks a girl unconscious with a ‘love touch’, but the villain now uses a magic spell.
In the 1996 book Attack of the Jack-O’-Lanterns, a character is described as “tall and handsome, with dark brown eyes and a big warm smile.” Lee is African-American, and he struts around when he walks and acts really cool, like the rappers in the MTV videos.
The revised version now calls the character “tall and handsome, with brown skin, dark brown eyes, and a big warm smile.” He struts around when he walks and acts very well.
Attack of the Jack O’Lanterns has had multiple editions by Scholastic publishers
The Goosebumps franchise spawned a 2015 movie starring Jack Black, which grossed $158 million at the box office.
In 1997’s The Curse of Camp Cold Lake, the boys at summer camp “hissed loudly,” instead of giving “a loud wolf whistle.”
Another book, I Live In Your Basement, originally features the main character asking, “Did you really expect me to be your slave, forever?”
The protagonist now asks: ‘Did you really expect me to do this, forever?’
Scholastic defended the changes, saying they were to protect mental health.
“For more than 30 years, the Goosebumps series has led millions of children to read through humor with just the right amount of fear,” the statement read.
Scholastic takes seriously its responsibility to continue to bring this classic teen brand to each new generation.
“In republishing the titles several years ago, Scholastic revised the text to maintain current language and avoid images that could negatively affect the view young people have of themselves today, with a particular focus on mental health.”
