Dame Snap - I think not!

So my Faraway Tree vent is this ...


In the newer versions of the books, Dame Slap has been changed to Dame Snap. She no longer slaps the naughty children, she snaps at them. What is she, a crocodile??? It's freakish for the PC publishing crowd to have changed this part of the story because the horror of Dame Slap's school was not just the terribly nonsensical questions, but also the fact that she slapped anyone and everyone with the slightest provocation. Twinkle's hair not brushed? Slap! Doodle's tunic is torn? Slap! Jo tells her (truthfully) about giving their aeroplane a rest? Slap! Everyone is noisy while she's out of the room? Everyone has to line up, walk past her and get ... you guessed it, slapped!

Dame Snap just doesn't have the same je ne sais quoi. Oh hang on, I do know what she used to have, it was sheer terror-making, shake in your boots-ed-ness. It now reads like this ...

"Twinkle, come here!" she said. A small pixie walked up to her. "Haven't I told you to brush your hair properly for meal-times? said Dame Snap. Twinkle burst into tears. "And there's Doodle over there with a torn tunic! said Dame Snap. "Come here, Doodle."
Doodle came. Bessie and Fanny felt nervous, and hoped their hair and hands and dresses were clean and tidy."

You see? You see? It's now meaningless.

Thanks heaps politically-correct-we-can't-possibly-have-a-story-where-kids-get-slapped-publishers.

Don't get me started on the name changes - my 5 yr old doesn't even know that Fanny is a word for genitals! It didn't need to be changed to FRannie, nor does he know/care about Dick (now Rick) or that Jo needs an E on the end to be the masculine, or that Bessie wasn't a good enough girl's name so now she's Beth.

WTF is going on in our crazy world when Enid Blyton gets PC-ified.

Vent over.