Our new read-aloud, which I asked you to name yesterday, is The BFG, by Roald Dahl (1916 - 1990), accelerated reader level 4.8 (fourth grade, eighth month).
Roald Dahl also wrote James and the Giant Peach, Boy, Danny the Champion of the World, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, among many others.
His work, including James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, was at times censored due to "undesirable" content; he is number 52 on the list of the 100 most censored books. There is a certain "us" against "them" theme to some of his books, in terms of pitting children against adults--the author siding with the children. Roald Dahl attended English boarding schools as a child, where he and his comrades were beaten and otherwise treated cruelly. These unfortunate school years lent a defiant flavour to his literary work.
You'll find a good adult versus a bad adult, as well, in his work. He believed that to interest and delight children, a writer needed to make the good characters very good, and the bad characters very bad. His exaggerated characters, not surprisingly, are a hit with children and adults alike. His work enjoys wide circulation today, well past his 1990 death.
While Dahl's James and the Giant Peach is required reading in many schools, his work hasn't received prestigious awards, I presume due to his bizarre sense of humour. Serious works of art dealing with the human condition earn awards, but humorous works are often undervalued. And why? It takes a unique, ingenious talent to make masses of people laugh, generation after generation. If we are to live balanced lives--and teach balance to our children--can we truly dwell only on serious content, however wonderful, however worthwhile we deem it? The Bronze Bow, which we just finished, truly is my second favorite book, but people, it was heavy, serious. We're deeper, smarter people for having read it, but my instinct as a person, as a mother, tells me now we must laugh! And laugh a lot--wholeheartedly.
When my family sits together laughing outrageously, I consider it a gift! Day to day life on this fallen earth is hard, and don't we need the reminder to hold everything loosely? To laugh at the days to come? I will always be grateful to artists who place high value on laughter--as a medicine, as a lifestyle.
Here are other hilarious excerpts from The BFG, (which stands for Big Friendly Giant)"
Here is the teaser from the back of my Puffin Book copy:
Roald Dahl also wrote James and the Giant Peach, Boy, Danny the Champion of the World, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, among many others.
His work, including James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, was at times censored due to "undesirable" content; he is number 52 on the list of the 100 most censored books. There is a certain "us" against "them" theme to some of his books, in terms of pitting children against adults--the author siding with the children. Roald Dahl attended English boarding schools as a child, where he and his comrades were beaten and otherwise treated cruelly. These unfortunate school years lent a defiant flavour to his literary work.
You'll find a good adult versus a bad adult, as well, in his work. He believed that to interest and delight children, a writer needed to make the good characters very good, and the bad characters very bad. His exaggerated characters, not surprisingly, are a hit with children and adults alike. His work enjoys wide circulation today, well past his 1990 death.
While Dahl's James and the Giant Peach is required reading in many schools, his work hasn't received prestigious awards, I presume due to his bizarre sense of humour. Serious works of art dealing with the human condition earn awards, but humorous works are often undervalued. And why? It takes a unique, ingenious talent to make masses of people laugh, generation after generation. If we are to live balanced lives--and teach balance to our children--can we truly dwell only on serious content, however wonderful, however worthwhile we deem it? The Bronze Bow, which we just finished, truly is my second favorite book, but people, it was heavy, serious. We're deeper, smarter people for having read it, but my instinct as a person, as a mother, tells me now we must laugh! And laugh a lot--wholeheartedly.
When my family sits together laughing outrageously, I consider it a gift! Day to day life on this fallen earth is hard, and don't we need the reminder to hold everything loosely? To laugh at the days to come? I will always be grateful to artists who place high value on laughter--as a medicine, as a lifestyle.
Here are other hilarious excerpts from The BFG, (which stands for Big Friendly Giant)"
"But if you don't eat people like all the others," Sophie said, "then what do you live on?"
"That is a squelching tricky problem around here," the BFG answered. "In this sloshflunking Giant Country, happy eats like pineapples and pigwinkles is simply not growing. Nothing is growing except for one extremely icky-poo vegetable. It is called the snozzcumber."
"The snozzcumber!" cried Sophie. "There's no such thing." (page 48)
"Here is the repulsant snozzcumber!" cried the BFG, waving it about. "I squoggle it! I mispise it! I dispunge it! But because I is refusing to gobble up human beans like the other giants, I must spend my life guzzling up icky-poo snozzcumbers instead. If I don't, I will be nothing but skin and groans." (page 50)
Here is the teaser from the back of my Puffin Book copy:
Just imagine suddenly knowing you may be eaten for breakfast in the very near future; dropped like a rasher of bacon into a frying pan sizzling with fat.
This is exactly what worries Sophie when she is snatched from her bed in the middle of the night by a giant with a stride as long as a tennis court. Luckily for Sophie, the BFG is far more jumbly than his disgusting neighbours, whose favourite pastime is guzzling and swallomping nice little childers. Sophie is determined to stop all this and so she and the BFG cook up an ingenious plan to rid the world of troggle-humping, bogthumping giants for ever!
2 comments:
Humm, I am going to have to find this one. I think my son would enjoy it. Aidan has read James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and enjoyed them very much. Thanks for the tip!
Hi Margie,
I think my kids would love his other works too. What an imagination he had!
I should have given some hints. This was too hard to guess, since it's not one of his most famous novels.
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