Newfoundland & Labrador

Newfoundland and Labrador Opinion

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PAM FRAMPTON: Kids don’t need references to TikTok and SnapChat to enjoy a good story

Modernizing books does a disservice to the authors and today's youth

Imagine if you saw a new, eye-catching edition of Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio in a bookstore and picked it up, only to find that the truth-challenged wooden marionette had been replaced by a robot with flashing lights for eyes and a telescopic proboscis to represent his growing nose.

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Or consider an Alice who got into some potent gummy bears before finding Wonderland instead of Lewis Carroll’s 1865 heroine, who merely fell down a metaphorical rabbit hole.

Or an Anne Shirley, who deliberately dyes her hair green, ignores her chores and takes to TikTok to try and make it as an early influencer on Prince Edward Island.

They might be interesting stories in their new incarnations, but they certainly would no longer reflect the era in which they were conceived and written.

The process of “updating” old books to reflect current times — or to at least........

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