I'll start saying I've not read Dahl's books and I'm only familiar with the Matilda movie, which I liked, and the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie, which was pretty weird and I disliked. However, even I can see how sensitivity readers had completely altered the books despite claims of trying to preserve the original essence.

I don't see the purpose of the changes, either. First, writers spent a good deal of time choosing every word; so, of course, any attempt to randomly change them is going to produce clunky results. Second, if you think the books are offensive, I really don't know why you are eager to read them, even if you're reading a tamer version. I think there is value in analyzing and discussing how a book covers controversial subjects (as long you don't start assuming that an author always supports everything that happens in their books or makes thing up, anyways), but this can only be done with the original. And when we're talking about old books, updating their language and ideas is, in my opinion, a form of historical revisionism, but whitewashing the past doesn't erase what happened. And, when you don't know history, it makes you prone to repeat past mistakes or unable to understand the present.

I'd say sensitivity readers should write their own stories instead, but I think it's clear why they don't: they really don't know how.

Kind off-topic for this sub, but this incident reminded me of the publication of Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince. In Latin America, the book title was translated not as Harry Potter y el príncipe mestizo, but as Harry Potter y el misterio del príncipe (Harry Potter and the Prince's Mystery) in case people got offended over the word mestizo even if it was the better translation choice. On the contrary, people were ofended because of the implication we would interpret it as a racist thing. And, besides the title, the books used the word mestizo, anyway, which made everything more ridiculous.