Adults don't, but children might. These books arn't consumed by people who are particularly aware of the cultural context of the ear in which they were written. Things are going to very much taken at face value. A lot of things have changed in the last 60 years.
> These books arn't consumed by people who are particularly aware of the cultural context of the ear in which they were written
Part of reading these books as a child or adolescent is being introduced to the cultural contexts of other times (and perhaps places). When a modern child reads a Victorian children's book, for example, they pick up pretty quickly that it's coming from a different cultural context. And this is a great way to learn about some of the more 'confronting' aspects of other cultural contexts in a pretty non-threatening way (they're just words on a page).
We gonna edit all books so kids don't take the crazy parts at face value? Swift? Dickens? The Bible? The Torah?
There have been thousands upon thousands upon thousands of children's books written in the last sixty years. Leave the classics the fuck alone, especially when the authors are unable to defend their work.
All of your examples, bible etc, have all been repeatedly edited for different cultures and age groups.
People act like this is the end of Dahls legacy, yet his stories have probably been discussed more in the past 24 hours than the past few years combined.
I recommend the book Graveyard clay on the death on languages, and how the dead are still as chatty as the living- in many ways the dead are harder to silence.
Reinterpretation happens, but shit would hit the fan if you actually went ahead and published a bowdlerized, inclusive, LGBT-centric Quran. Salman Rushdie would have another friend in his misery.
It is worthwhile to meditate on Nassim Nicholas Taleb's idea that the most intolerant minority tends to win.
