UPDATE: 2023/03/07 08:47 EST BY JOSEPH BAXTER
R.L. Stine Debunks Goosebumps Book Editing Claim
R.L. Stine is emphatically denying the claim reported by The Times that he edited the content of his Goosebumps novels. "This story is false," the author tweeted. "I have never changed a word in a Goosebumps book." The following article reported on the claim before Stine's response.
Following a decision by publisher Penguin Books’ subsidiary Puffin to edit author Roald Dahl’s catalog of children’s novels, Scholastic and author R.L. Stine have followed suit by making over one hundred edits to the classic children’s horror fiction series Goosebumps.
According to The Sunday Times, Scholastic Books is working with one of its most renowned authors to make changes to a book series released over thirty years ago. Stine’s best-selling series Goosebumps first hit bookstore shelves in 1992 and sold up to four million copies per month at the peak of its popularity. There are 62 books in the original Goosebumps series, not including numerous spinoff series. The decision to make changes to the books came after another publisher, Penguin Books, chose to revise works by author Roald Dahl, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda. The word “fat” was censored in several of Dahl’s books, and phrases like “most formidable female” and “small men” were changed to “most formidable woman” and “small people,” respectively.
Changes to Goosebumps
The move by Penguin resulted in such an outcry from the public that the publisher later modified their plan and announced that the unrevised versions of Dahl’s books, “The Roald Dahl Classic Collection,” would also be released later in 2023. Unlike Penguin, Scholastic has the original author of the work making edits himself. Some of the changes Stine has made include removing words like “slave” and “love tap” while replacing other phrases. “African-American” has been changed to “with brown skin,” and a line describing overweight characters as "having six chins” was rewritten to describe the characters as being tall instead of obese, with the new text reading “at least six feet six.” In The Curse of Camp Cold Lake, the text has been revised to describe a “wolf-whistle” as “whistled loudly.”
Children’s books have not been the only works subject to modern revisionism. Following Penguin’s move to edit Dahl’s novels, Ian Fleming Publications also made changes to the author’s James Bond book series, one of which, You Only Live Twice, was adapted into a screenplay by Dahl. Unlike the revisions to Dahl’s novels, the changes made to Fleming’s books were condoned by the author.
Before introducing the world to Goosebumps, Stine wrote for the Nickelodeon series Eureeka’s Castle. Eventually, the Goosebumps franchise spawned two feature films, both starring Jack Black as Stine, released theatrically in 2015 and 2019. Netflix also produced a live-action adaptation of another of Stine’s horror book series, Fear Street.
Scholastic has yet to announce the release date for revised Goosebumps titles. The Goosebumps television series, the 2015 film, and all three installments of Fear Street are available on Netflix.
Source: The Sunday Times, via Deadline