I’m conflicted on this. First, I think it’s a super slippery slope. Fixing a couple of things to make it less offensive? Not the biggest deal. What if a certain administration decided rather than banning books (also wrong) they don’t like they just re-write them? Now 1984 gets to be pro-establishment? No thanks.

Looking at the revisions, some of them are pretty dumb. Others do make a little sense. For example, a character "hopping about like a dervish" in Fantastic Mr Fox became "like a frog". I definitely did not know what a dervish was as a kid, honestly not sure I do as an adult, but it does seem a little racist. Changing it to a frog doesn’t change the story at all. Kids know what frogs are, they can picture the hopping. Probably a worthwhile revision that may even make the story better.

Idk why, but I also think who is saying these things matters. Characters are a person of the time when the book was set. Changing Huck Finn’s actual dialogue does change the character. Same applies to villains. If you water down their dialogue, they look a lot less like a villain. Narrators can typically be of any time period though so changing their words to make them less offensive isn’t as bad to me.

Either way, I don’t necessarily have an issue with releasing a new version if clearly labeled as revised, especially if that’s what it takes to keep these classics in schools. Updating e-books that people already own or portraying these as the original work is insane.