The Blue Eye, which features ‘scary’ people in street market, has been withdrawn from sale after complaints
Photograph: YouTube/Triangle NewsPhotograph: YouTube/Triangle NewsOne of the books in the popular Biff, Chip and Kipper series for children has been withdrawn from sale, with all remaining copies pulped by the publisher, Oxford University Press, after complaints that it was Islamophobic.
The series is written by Roderick Hunt and illustrated by Alex Brychta, and consists of more than 220 stories. The books were created in 1986, and have been used in schools for years to help children learn to read. In The Blue Eye, which was published in 2001, Biff and her friend Wilf are magically transported to a different country, with an illustration showing what appears to be a Middle Eastern-looking marketplace. Background characters are shown wearing turbans, and one woman wears a niqab .
In the original version, Biff says that the pair should stick together because “people don’t seem very friendly” while Wilf calls the place “scary”. Twitter users, including teachers, said they were concerned about the book’s depiction of people who looked Muslim.
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