HTML::TreeBuilder eating my entities using perl 5.8.x

hi there!

Sorry for cross posting to comp.lang.perl.modules, but this seems to be
the right place.

I'm using HTML-TreeBuilder to parse HTML code that actually contains
entities in it's text nodes. Working with perl 5.6.1 and the newest
HTML::TreeBuilder/HTML::Tree/HTML::Parser versions was satisfying, but
using perl 5.8.4 there is a problem with a different entity treatment.
Perl 5.8.4 translates the entities in the text nodes (such as ⚔)
into unicode characters (2 bytes) and actually doesn't ask me before
;-)
Is there a possibility to make HTML::TreeBuilder with perl 5.6.x and
perl 5.8.x react the same way (storing entities as they are)?

best regards,
Michael