Roald Dahl (1916-1990)

James and the Giant Peach (1961)

James is a young boy who lives by the sea in England. For his birthday, his parents plan to take him to New York to visit the Empire State Building.

But a charging ghostly rhinoceros from the sky kills James’s parents and James is sent to live with his cruel aunts, Spike and Sponge, who force him to work all day.

When they try to squash a spider, James rescues it and then meets a man who gives him a bag of magic green “crocodile tongues.”

Fantastic Mr. Fox (1970)

Fantastic Mr. Fox and his wife Felicity steal food every night from three wealthy-and-mean farmers.

The Foxes are caged in a Fox trap when they attempt to raid Berk’s Squab Farm. Felicity tells Mr. Fox that she is pregnant, and convinces him to become a more stable member of the community.

Two years later, Mr. Fox is a newspaper columnist and they have a sullen son named Ash.

Charlie and the Chocolte Factory (1971)

Charlie Bucket is a kind and loving boy who lives with his impoverished parents and four grandparents. Before his job was terminated, Charlie’s Grandpa Joe had worked for Willy Wonka in his chocolate factory.

The Cadbury Chocolate factory was the real-life inspiration for Willy Wonka’s famous inventing room with its bubbling machines that produce the “Everlasting Gobstoppers,” a kind of candy bar invented and sold after the movie, but we haven’t seen it for years.

In the story, Willy Wonka tells his parents that five golden tickets will be hidden in Wonka bars. The children who get them will be taken on a tour of the factory.

The Twits (1980)

Roald Dahl hated beards and so wanted to “do something against beards.”

The first sentence in this book is “What a lot of hairy-faced men there are around nowadays!”

The story is about a hideous, vindictive, and spiteful couple known as the Twits.

They live in a brick house without any windows.

They are retired circus trainers who keep a family of pet monkeys called the “Muggle Wumps.” They are training the monkeys to stand on their heads so they can have the first “upside-down-monkey circus.”

Matilda (1988)

In a Library Association, survey Matilda ranked #30 among all-time children’s favorite books.

She is a precocious child who lives in a small village in England and was mistreated by her parents.

She gets even with them by pulling such tricks as gluing her father’s hat to his head and by hiding her friend’s parrot in the chimney so her family thinks they have a ghost.

The BFG (1982

BFG says, “Whizpopping is a sign of happiness. It is music in our ears!”

“A look of absolute ecstasy began to spread over his long wrinkly face. Then suddenly the heavens opened and he let fly with a series of the loudest and rudest noises Sophie had ever heard in her life…. The force of the explosions actually lifted the enormous giant clear off his feet, like a rocket.”