The copyright in The Little Prince expired in most of the world at the end of last year (it has thirty more years to run in France because Antoine de Saint-Exupéry died in the Second World War, 'Mort pour la France'). In the first two weeks of January, more than thirty Turkish publishers released translations of the 1943 novella. Between them they bought 130,000 bandrols, holographic stickers required for every book sold in Turkey.

Today, apparently, is Roald Dahl Day (were he alive it would be his 96th birthday). Here's Michael Irwin in the LRB on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (from a review of George's Marvellous Medicine, 1 October 1981): There are several things that Roald Dahl has got emphatically right, the most important being his appreciation of the passion children feel for sweets in general and perhaps for chocolate in particular. For pre-pubertal Westerners, sweets fill the vacuum later to be occupied by sex. It is unnerving to watch an otherwise decent child being temporarily demoralised (in the literal sense of being morally corrupted) by a desire for sweets as an otherwise decent adult may be by sexual need.