Semi-contrarian position here - I've never liked Dahl, and I was always annoyed by how he was pushed on me by the literary types in early school (the same ones that wanted me to read The Great Gatsby and The Stranger eventually). But I think that those people had some goal behind pushing him, and perhaps that goal is consistent with the rewriting? Something about kids who feel like outsiders (maybe???)?

Very different, e.g., than Kipling or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?