Does Kid-Literature need a clean-up app?

A new app that removes swear words from books should go down a treat in India. That it was devised by a concerned American couple who wanted ‘clean’ reading options for their young daughter will actually add to the attraction of the application here, as many Indians would, well, swear by the need to rid reading material of all sorts of objectionable words. Of course, the very invention of such an app begs the question of what passes for children’s literature these days. Hopefully, the picture will become clearer once the list of words that fall foul of the three settings — ‘clean’, ‘cleaner’ and ‘squeaky clean’ — is made public. No doubt these three filters will also offer much insight into how parents grade the relative dirtiness of words.

But as meanings have a way of changing across geographies, cultures and timelines, care needs to be taken to ensure that ‘innocent’ words do not needlessly get the chop. Leaving users to decide which words are verboten could also lead to confusion, particularly if some overzealous efforts result in the zapping out everything except punctuation marks. Then there is always a chance that the children’s peer group may have read those very works in their ‘unsanitised’ version, which would lead to rather piquant situations during book discussions in class, and render the clean-up redundant.