> As a wheelchair user, I could not help noticing that the original Bond books had, shall we say, an interesting relationship to embodied difference. It was a f

> As a wheelchair user, I could not help noticing that the original Bond books had, shall we say, an interesting relationship to embodied difference. It was a feature of Fleming’s writing that would be all but impossible to alter through the interventions of a sensitivity reader, hired by the publisher to make the books more palatable to contemporary readers. Fleming’s attitude to disability was encoded not only in words and phrases, but in characterisation and plot – that is, in the stories’ most fundamental qualities. And this is precisely why the whole endeavor is so misguided! The values of the author are embedded in their stories; you can't just "fix" those stories with a few tweaks and a puff of magic smoke. It would be much better, I'd think, to just accept the original works for what they are: the imperfect creations of complicated people. This applies to Roald Dahl too, by the way. IMO, The Witches is an inherently mysogonistic story beyond what any number of light edits can change. That doesn't mean nobody should read it, and in fact, I think a children's book like The Witches is a great opportunity to teach kids to be critical of what they read. What does this book teach us? Which of those lessons are good, and which are not? Why?