Fantastic Mr. Fox

Fantastic Mr. Fox  by Roald Dahl

Three gluttonous farmers are upset that the Fox is stealing their birds. They work to exterminate the fox with guns, tractors and other devices. They think they have finally trapped the fox underground and are ready to shoot him the instance he pops up. The fox's family is near starvation when he gets an idea. He tunnels and reaches under the chicken coop. He is able to sneak in and take some birds and bring them down to eat. He does similar activities to raid other farmers. Now the fox and his family and other tunnel animals can feast without risk of harm from the farmers. The farmers are still out there waiting to capture them. It is a great short work with Dahl's dark humour.

Matilda

Matilda by Roald Dahl

As I was recently rereading Matilda, I was amazed at how faithful the movie adaptation is to the book. Most of the major plot elements and themes are present. Matilda is an extremely precocious little girl. Her parents are a used car salesman and a white-trash beauty queen. They could care less for intellectual achievement and actively fight against it. As a toddler, Matilda goes to the library herself to read. At school, the teacher wants her to go to a higher grade, but the headmistress, Trunchbull, will have nothing of that. Trunchbull runs a strict school and uses kid to practice her athletic skills. Matilda discovers she has some magical talent and uses that to help "defeat" Trunchbull and restore Matilda's teacher's rightful inheritance. Things look up from the school perspective. But then Matilda returns home to find her parents moving. (stolen car fraud had caught up with Dad.) The family is more than willing to let Matilda be adopted by her teacher making everyone happier. 

Dahl utilizes his over-the-top humor to tell a compelling story. The events are almost real, but have exaggerated events occur. It is sad when those with intellectual talent are brought down by their families or the educational system. It is great that Matilda could have a happy ending. What about others?

The Twits, The Minpins & The Magic Finger

The Twits, The Minpins & The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl

The Twits (1980)

The twits are a cruel couple who seem to always be fighting and playing mean jokes on each other.

The Minpins (1991)

Billy lives a controlled life. He ends up discovering the Minpins and then helps rid them of their enemies, making him well respected.

The Magic Finger (1966)

A girl has a "magic finger" which causes things to happen to people she is upset with. She has little control of the finger does. She sees some neighbors be cruel to animals as they are hunting them. When they get magic-fingered, they turn into the ducks and the ducks move to inhabit their house. After he experience, they get greater respect for animals and stop hunting for sport. At the end it is implied that another family will soon get the finger.

Magic Finger was my favorite of the books in this series. I got a little lost with Minpins.

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl

The sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory takes the story on a science fiction trip. The glass elevator goes a bit too far and ends up in orbit. There it runs into the space hotel. At first they are seen as enemies to the US. After they scare off bad aliens, they are ready to be awarded a medal. There is also experience of specials substances that let people take years off their age or add years on. Alas, people take too many and find themselves babies - or multiple centuries old. The book seems a mishmash of interesting concepts, but other than the characters does not relate much to the previous book.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

The tale of Willy Wonka and Charlie starts out fairly "normal" and then gets zanier. Charlie Bucket lives a poor but happy life with his parents and all four grandparents. Nearby is the giant chocolate factory. One day the enigmatic factory owner announces a contest where 5 lucky customers can visit the chocolate factory. They just need to find the golden ticket in their chocolate. Charlie's grandpa makes a special purchase of a chocolate bar. Alas, no golden ticket. Later through some special luck, Charlie is able to get a chocolate bar and finds the golden ticket. The other kids are all extremely spoiled in different ways.

The chocolate factory is a marvel of high and low technology. The workers are mostly Umpa Lumpas who have been rescues from their land. They happily work and sing, but never leave the factory. There are also squirrels that manage nuts and other strange "employees". Wonka went to extremes to make sure nobody stole his ideas. These ideas included everlasting gobstoppers, gum with special powers and many more such as a teleportation TV.

The other kids ended up meeting cruel ends as they gave into their vices. This left Charlie as the lone kid remaining. He then found out he inherited the factory as he shot off in the great class elevator. The other kids had been "restored" and received their lifetime supply of chocolate.

There is a moral tale in the book, but the delivery is what makes it great.

Esio Trot

Esio Trot by Roald Dahl, illustrated by Quentin Blake

A woman is upset because her turtle does not seem to be putting on weight. A man wants to marry the woman. He hatches a plan. He tells her you must speak to the turtle in turtle language (which is backwards English.) The man bought other tortoises from the pet store and gradually swaps them out to make it appear the woman's is growing. She is happy and they get married. The book is very short, but still has some Dahl touches.

The BFG

The BFG by Roald Dahl

Most giants like to eat people. They have various preferences for the type of person and will snatch them during the night to eat. The BFG is the exception. He is a Big Friendly Giant. He likes to eat plants and other animals instead of people. One day he captures a girl. He doesn't plan to eat her. However, he can't let her go back because she has seen him.

We get to know the personality of the giant. He has trouble with words, often saying one word when he means another. He also has a number of "giant terms". There are different animals and plants that don't exist in our world. They all have ridiculous sounding words. The book is filled with all of the misspoken and made up words, but is never hard to understand. 

The BFG likes to capture dreams. The girl and the BFG decide to use the dream skill to help the Queen to understand what the other giants are up to. She dreams about giants, and then reads about kids getting stolen. They are then able to make a plan to capture the giant.

The book is filled with plenty of silliness as the giant tries to communicate with humans. Their cultures are very different, with challenges ranging from size requirements to "farting music", not to mention all the vocabulary and communications issues. The plot is the icing on the cake.

George's Marvelous Medicine

George's Marvelous Medicine by Roald Dahl

George likes to eat good food. His grandmother doesn't like him to eat chocolate because it will make him grow. He tinkers around and makes a medicine. Grandma consumes it and grows huge. A chicken also grows big with the medicine. Others realize that they may be on to something. George tries to make more, but has trouble remembering exactly how it was made. The other ones don't turn out exactly as expected. Grandma sees one of the batches of medicine and treats it as her tea, consuming a megadose. This ends up making her shrink to a super small size. We feel that she got what she deserved. This is a short, typical Dahl book. The adults try to control children, but get their own medicine.

The Witches

The Witches by Roald Dahl

The witches are having a convention a local hotel. They look a lot like normal women, though there are some subtle differences (like the lack of toes). A boy is with his grandmother at the hotel. There is also another snobbish boy with his parents. The witches create a potion to turn them to mice. Even though they have mouse bodies, they still have their brains and can talk. They hatch a plan to take down the witches by putting the potion in their soup. After some harrying mouse moves they do it, and the witches become mice, thus saving the lives of many kids. The book has plenty of Dahl's dark humour. 

James and the Giant Peach

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

Like in his other books, Dahl ramps up everything to the extreme. James is living an absolutely miserable lives. His parents have died and he is stuck living with his totally evil aunts. One is extremely fat. The other extremely skinny. Both treat James as their personal servant boy. Then he happens to run into somebody that gifts him some magic crystals. Alas, he drops them near the peach tree. This leads to the tree producing a giant peach as well as some bugs becoming human size. And from here the fun begins.

The "evil women" try to make money off the giant peach. They still leave James to do work. He ends up entering the peach where he discovers the giant bugs. They set off in an adventure in the peach. Alas, as the first part of the adventure, they happen to roll over the James' guardians, thereby freeing him. They tumble through the ocean, manage to get carried by birds, escape cloud men and finally land on the empire state building (where they are mistaken for alien invaders.) 

The book moves along at a fast pace. Some things don't necessarily add up, but there is enough to keep it somewhat credible. In the end, everyone (bug and human alike) live happily ever after.

This Missng Golden Ticket

The Missing Golden Ticket and Other Splendiferous Secrets by Roald Dahl

The selling point of this book is the "missing chapter" from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This is a humorous chapter about "spotty powder", a substance nearly identical to sugar, but which causes short term "spots" to appear on the body.

Unfortunately, this chapter is only a couple of pages long, so a lot had to be added to complete a book. The chapter also featured characters that did not make it in the the final cut of the book. Some of the book provide background on the book's creation and the "missing characters" that didn't make it in to the published book.

The main "theme" of the book, however, is Raold Dahl's year. Each month is given a brief chapter. In between these chapters are other bits, including Chocolate Factory trivia, tips on writing, and even candy recipes. The in-between chapters tends to be better than the actual "month" chapters. The book, however, is quite a jumble, jumping from serious to humorous. It is really only for the most dedicated Roald Dahl fan who must have everything.