A patron returned three Roald Dahl books to a library in Ontario nearly 40 years overdue in a bid to avoid a $1,000 fee.
The Parry Sound Public Library in Ontario, Canada welcomed Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “The BFG,” and “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator” back to its shelves after being missing for so long that they had been removed from the catalog entirely.
The library staff had to check the publishing date to estimate how long the books had been missing, Cayla Norrie, Parry Sound Public Library programming manager, told the Parry Sound North Star. From there, they were able to estimate a steep late fee of $1,423.50 in Canadian dollars, translating to $1,054.76 in the United States.
The rogue returnee remains unknown, but has narrowly avoided shelling out the hefty fine thanks to a policy change in 2019 that banned overdue fees.
“I think there can be some kind of shame sometimes when there are overdue fines, and we just wanted to take that out of it altogether to encourage people to take things out and bring them back to us,” Norrie told the Parry Sound North Star.
Norrie speculates that whoever held onto the books all these years likely rediscovered them while moving or reorganizing their home.
The Dahl books returned contain the original print, which has since been rewritten in many copies across the U.S. to remove offensive language. Some of these unedited versions have sold for as much as $7,000 online.
