Penguin unveiled a brand new anniversary edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last week. The Roald Dahl novel is eliciting a hefty amount of criticism from the entire reading community.
The new book cover is eliciting a tremendous amount of negative press on Penguins official Facebook page, where the unveiling took place. Creepy, awful, Toddlers and Tiaras, Valley of the Dolls, A low point for Penguin covers, the image is dreadful, is that supposed to be Veruca Salt? Absolutely misleading. I wouldn’t buy a book with a cover like this for my child. It is a timeless classic and Penguin has ruined it. One Dahl fan summed up the reaction: ‘Is there time for a reprint? You’re destroying my childhood.’
But Penguin said it stressed “the light and the dark aspects” of Dahl’s work. “This design is in recognition of the book’s extraordinary cultural impact and is one of the few children’s books to be featured in the Penguin Modern Classics list. This new image for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory looks at the children at the centre of the story, and highlights the way Roald Dahl’s writing manages to embrace both the light and the dark aspects of life.”
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
