Penguin Books released a new cover of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Roald Dahl’s classic. The cover features a young girl wrapped in a pale pink feather boa and wearing a magenta dress. A silk, pink bow sits atop her long, wavy blonde hair, and her pink manicured hands rest in her lap. Her facial features and disposition—blue eyes staring blankly ahead, flawless porcelain skin bearing heavy makeup—resemble a doll. The mother, also adorned in various shades of pink, sits next to her child, albeit cropped out. The focus is on the child.
Perplexed fans guessed the girl was supposed to be one of the two female characters who tour the factory, Veruca or Violet, which Penguin said is not the case. Stumped critics, fans, and authors have been left wondering: Why would Penguin place a Toddlers and Tiaras mother-daughter look-alike as the face of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a rags-to riches-story about a boy, Charlie Bucket, who inherits Wonka’s coveted factory?
Upon waves of criticism and confusion, Penguin defended its decision to use an image of a doll-like young girl on its Facebook page: “This new image for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory looks at the children at the center of the story, and highlights the way Roald Dahl’s writing manages to embrace both the light and the dark aspects of life, ready for Charlie’s debut amongst the adult titles in the Penguin Modern Classics series.”
Penguin’s explanation has not resonated well with the public. Critics have called the new cover of the heavily made-up “creepy,” “misleading,” “a big mistake,” “grotesque,” and “totally wrong.” Author of The Crane Wife Patrick Ness tweeted, “Just so we’re clear, that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory cover is one of the biggest publishing mistakes ever. Hitler’s Diaries bad.”
Ouch. Do these criticisms have merit? Did Penguin make a mistake? Let’s assess.
First, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is not intended for adults, even though Penguin claims it is. It is a children’s book. Yes, the book illustrates the consequences of bad parenting, but the reading level of the book is for nine- to twelve-year olds. No adult would read this unless they were reading it to their children. And Dahl does, as Penguin says, put children at the center of the story –not adults, Even if it was meant for an older audience, there is no reason for putting a girl—one who “looks more like Lolita,” according to author Giles Paley-Phillips—on the cover. Chocolate author Joanne Harris summed it up best: “I’m not sure why adults need a different cover anyway, but who was it who decided that ‘adult’ meant ‘inappropriately sexualized?’”
Penguin said the photograph entitled “Mommie Dearest,” taken from a French magazine shoot by photographers Sofia Sanchez and Mauro Mongiello, means to show how Dahl’s writing “embraces both the light and dark aspects of life.” Charlie and the Chocolate Factory does illustrate bleak, dysfunctional parent-child relationships through gluttonous Augustus Gloop; T.V. addict Mike Teavee; spoiled Veruca Salt; and impulsive gum chewer Violet Beauregarde, glossed by descriptions of “marshmallows that taste of violets,” “rich caramels that change color every ten seconds as you suck them,” “little feathery sweets that melt away deliciously the moment you put them between your lips,” and “chewing-gum that never loses its taste.” One by one, the four spoiled children’s aforementioned vices entice them to disobey Wonka’s instructions and, as a result, disappear … And one by one, the parents follow suit to find their children. Not Charlie, though. The impoverished, well-mannered boy wins the grand prize as successor to Wonka’s factory for being the last child left.
“Mommie Dearest” tries to capture the “light” aspects of Dahl’s book—“the hot ice creams for cold days,” “the cows that give chocolate milk,” the “eatable marshmallow pillows”—through the doll-like features and setting of a photo shoot taking place. But one does not need to see much more than the façade to realize that it’s already disturbing. Yet, the viewer can infer that hidden beneath the disturbing façade is a screwed up mother-daughter relationship analogous to the ones showcased on Toddlers and Tiaras, a show on TLC about how disturbed, competitive mothers push their daughters to compete in pageants. Penguin put a modern phenomenon of parent-child dysfunction prominent in pop culture today on the cover of a book that examines these broken relationships.
However, the child on the cover looks no more than six-years-old, which implies that the mother is to blame for her bad behavior, similar to other television shows like Little Miss Perfect and even Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dahl suggests that it’s difficult to tell if the child or parent should be at fault for bratty behavior. Is it the parents, for not enforcing discipline, or the children? The age of the child on the cover is off; she does not match the ages of the children in the book.
The overarching point is that Dahl puts generous, thoughtful Charlie Bucket at the center of his story, and recognizes and rewards his good behavior: Charlie wins the grand prize as successor to Wonka’s factory. Yes, Dahl examines dysfunction and advises children how not to act, but he also advises how to act through the protagonist, Charlie. The story centers on him… So much so that his name is in the book’s title. The cover should focus on him also.
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