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Jack & the Beanstalk - how could anyone forget "fee fi fo fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread" An absolute classic you could never forget.. Right? Wrong! I picked up a copy this week for my son only to find the words have changed. "fee fi fo fum! Watch out everyone, here I come" Have all versions changed, or just this particular book from Cheners? Was the Giant really that offensive that he needed toning down for little new age ears?
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I was just commenting on this the other day, that our CD version was actually the original - I think all the other versions we have, have been doctored in some way or another, even amending the story (why Jack stole the hen) and what happens to the giant.


It does all seem a little like the world gone PC mad or protecting our kids from the horrible nightmares that the original story gave us (not!).


Nothing wrong with eating English little boys!!! (And I don't say that just because I'm Scottish!!)

I've been to a Bookstart session where "there was an old lady who swallowed a fly... perhaps she'll cry". I think it's complete madness! I don't have any lasting childhood scars from the versions of fairytales and nursery rhymes where they didn't live happily ever after.


My son was quite disappointed by a book he got from school today involving a pig and a wolf ("Suddenly") as he thought the wolf looked hungry and would have liked to eat the pig at the end :)

I find it all quite amusing... as no matter what my boys will still go around fighting each other, 'killing' each other, and turning hair brushes in to guns to fire each other... And my daughter will sing 'hairspray'!


Penguin I think do all the classics, in the original version. I actually forgot how gruesome some of these are, but the kids always seem fine whatever version they read.


I taught my eldest the 'playground' version of a song she came home singing the other day... felt like a naughty school girl myself!


candj - I think I know the play you were at! I think all the parents find it rather amusant!

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