I re-read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last week and was very surprised that the text specifies that the Oompa-Loompas have "rosy-white" skin. I, too, remembered them as dark skinned, and the illustrations aren't particularly racially specific. I was expecting something as offensive as the darkies in the early editions of Dr. Doolittle. Perhaps there is more than one edition of the text?

I was also surprised by the degree to which I disliked the ending of the novel--not in that Charlie gets the factory, which is fine, but in its weird combination of abruptness (it comes, unearned, out of nowhere) and anticlimax (because it takes several pages to unwind, pages in which nothing interesting happens). The downbeat false ending of the first film adaptation makes the eventual triumph seem all the sweeter, and I compliment its screenwriter (uncredited on IMDB) for the changes. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending of the Burton adaptation.