I had problems with the word "jumper" as a kid, too!

Vest is the one that always trips me up.

pparently kids were thought to be smarter in the '50s, since Elizabeth Enright's Gone-Away Lake uses the Philosopher's Stone as a main plot point.

Awww, I loved her books!

...wait, what does vest mean in British??

...wait, what does vest mean in British??

undershirt.

I still reread my Elizabeth Enright on occasion, and they're still good. The Melendys were the family I wanted to be part of, instead of my own.

I am giddy happy!

I veered into my normally woeful local library branch with no expectations of finding anything interesting. How wrong I was.

There were not one, but TWO copies of Deathly Hallows on cd.

::snag::

Usually, I buy the hardbacks on the day and then wait months to find a good deal on the audiobooks.

Ooooh. Voldemort just said,"Such lllliiiiieeeeesss Lucius."

Fun!

I read a bunch of E. Nesbit back in the day, but I must not have cared what anyone was wearing, since I don't recall any of these words.

The Canadian editions actually provide a bit of a check here - there weren't any changes to the books, as far as I know, and most of the changes were words that are just as unfamiliar to Canadians as to Americans. Were the sales any less impressive in Canada (proportionate to population, of course)?

I think Canadians are a bit more... anglophilic maybe? England and its ways are less of an "other" to y'all than to us. Even if you don't use the actual vocabulary they're more like cousins than second or third cousins familiarity-wise.

I think punching up the title of a book ("Sorcerer" deffinately sounds more exciting than "Philosopher") isn't so much of a crime.

As far as liking Britishisms in childrens books... I always did too. But we're largely nerds. We liked reading and words and other cultures were interesting as opposed to disconcerting. Making a book more appealing to a larger population with minor vocabulary tweaks just strikes me as a variant on translation.

I'm with Trudy.

I know families who have read the book even with a father who says things like "I think reading should be outlawed because people read too much". Of course I also know people who won't read it because of the witchcraft thing, and this is in upstate ny in an educational institution.

Yet someone there put the added time and effort in to "translate" (for lack of a better word) a book no one really believed too deeply in, and in the competitive U.S. children's book market, it probably made all the difference.

For what it's worth, "translating" books from British to American English is quite common. The sister of my college roommate's first job in publishing was "translating" books for Doring Kindersley.

I remembering around the time of PoA finding a website detailing all the differences between the two editions. I'm sure it's still out there.

Speaking of translation, I learned from my cousins in Montreal that a number of character names are changed in the French translation to maintain the jokes and references. Unfortunately I don't remember any examples, although I do think that Filch was one of the characters with a name change.