Censored: Lindsey Gardiner and the offending scenes
Posted on 11/18/2007 1:58:49 PM PST by Stoat
A leading children's author was told to drop a fire-breathing dragon shown in a new book - because the publishers feared they could be sued under health and safety regulations.
It is just one of the politically correct cuts Lindsey Gardiner says she has been told to make in case youngsters act out the stories.
As well as the scene showing her dragon toasting marshmallows with his breath, illustrations of an electric cooker with one element glowing red and of a boy on a ladder have had to go.
Ms Gardiner, 36, who has written and illustrated 15 internationally successful children's books, featuring her popular characters Lola, Poppy and Max, says such editing decisions are now common.
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Censored: Lindsey Gardiner and the offending scenes
In Who Wants A Dragon? - published by Orchard Books last year - Ms Gardiner says: "I was told, 'You can't have the dragon breathing fire because it goes against health and safety.'
"It doesn't really make any sense.
"Sales and marketing departments are worried something might offend somebody, or that a child might copy something in a book and their parents will sue the publisher."
Pointing out that classic fairy tales such as Hansel And Gretel or Little Red Riding Hood would not get published today, Ms Gardiner said: 'It's a sad reflection of modern society."
In When Poppy And Max Grow Up, published by Orchard Books in 2001, Max was originally shown on a ladder "They didn't allow that because they thought it was precarious," said Ms Gardiner.
"Then I had to change the element on a cooker from glowing red to green.
"It is crazy. When I go to book signings, I sometimes take with me some colouring pictures, and the kids draw the elements as red because the cooker is on and it's hot. They are not stupid.
"I've had books published in Japan, France, Spain and Holland and they don't ask for the same changes.
"It seems to be in Britain and the U.S. that there are problems."
Nobody from Orchard Books was available for comment but a spokesman for the Publishers Association said: "We are aware of some concerns by authors and it is something we can talk about in the industry."
Yes, but the nanny-state Socialists are. This is merely one more avenue by which the Left seeks to create dependency upon Government....protecting The Children from any slight danger posed by Reality and insulate them in a cocoon of lies.
The author's official website
However “Heather has Two Mommies” is OK as are any books that scare kids with global warming hysteria.
Evidently the libtards feel that everybody is as brain dead as they are.
Here’s another one. It gets so ludicrous sometimes, you don’t know how to react.
Ping
Yeah, you just can't go around encouraging kids to breathe fire. Doing that might set the house ablaze. If that were to happen, the parents would most certainly sue. :=)
Dragons breath fire, it’s a fact of life, get over it.
Censored dragons, cookstoves and boys on ladders ping
Teaching children to be weak and dependant.
Stories about book-banning, commie nanny-staters, and their fellow travelers should be banned — because children might try to imitate them.
Scott Adams got ahead of the curve on this one — in the Dilbert cartoons Phil, the “Prince of Insufficient Light” merely darns people to heck.
Don’t forget that “The Best Work Book Ever” was altered to be ultra-PC too.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kokogiak/66087367/in/set-1425737/
Okay, okay... she should just always have behind each fire-breathing dragon an illustration of a fire extinguisher. That should soothe the kooks for now.
And if not, then what they really are after is tearing down society/civilization.
The door flew open, in he ran,
The great, long, red-legged scissorman.
Oh! children, see! the tailor's come
And caught our little Suck-a-Thumb.
Ridiculous. I hate censropship and PC idiocy.
censorship* even...I hate bad spelling too LOL
Fire Breathing Dragons only exist in the minds of fictitious stories. Its absurd to *ban* a fictitious character from a fictitious story based on some flimsy notion that it “harms the children”. SHEESH, wait’ll these innocent children grow up to find out what the world is *really* about, and all this PC nonsense is just that .... NONSENSE.
Well, the p.c. police have pretty much banned Huck Finn, he was fictitious too.
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