Books by author: Roald Dahl

This is the first multi-night chapter book that I've read to Kevin and Rachel together, and it turned out to be a big success. Both kids enjoyed the story of Sophie, a little girl kidnapped by the Big Friendly Giant, and how she and the BFG outwit the mean giants who eat little kids.

Roald Dahl is going over very well in my house these days. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator looks to be next.

Kevin and I continue to have great success with Roald Dahl's books. We were so into this one that our usual 20 minutes at bedtime turned over into a hour the next morning, just so we could get to the end. We're jumping right into The BFG next.

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator is a huge disappointment after Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The plot is incoherent, the characters unlikeable, and the wordplay lame. This is the worst Roald Dahl Kevin and I have read so far.

Kevin and I chose this after finishing Stuart Little, and we both liked it a lot more. Roald Dahl's prose here is very easy to read aloud, and the story is whimsical and very engaging. The illustrations are very cool in a twisted sort of way, and they occur with sufficient frequency to help maintain a kid's attention. I'm looking forward to trying some Dahl's other books too...maybe Matilda next.

Matilda tells the story of a precocious 5-year-old girl with horrible parents. She tortures her parents (they deserve it), befriends her schoolteacher, stands down her evil headmistress, and lives happily ever after. It's very engaging and entertaining, and has just enough outlandish bits to make it really fun. I found it a little strange that Dahl spends most of the novel describing Matilda and her environment, and it's only in the last quarter that the real story arc takes place, but that didn't bother me.

I read Matilda aloud to Kevin (age 6) over the course of a dozen nights' bed-times, and he loved it (especially the "beams-out-of-the-eyes" parts) and wasn't put off by the many British-isms in the language. It was one of the best reading experiences we've had together.

I've been on a bit of a Roald Dahl kick in my bedtime reading with Kevin, so I thought I'd try out some of his adult writing. The four stories collected here are very adult indeed. They were first published in Playboy and they are quite sexually charged.

Each of the stories features a "gotcha!" twist ending, and they're all amusing in a twisted way, but having finished them, I'm not all that fired up to read more of Dahl's adult stories.

After reading James and the Giant Peach, I was in the mood to read something else by Roald Dahl. I had borrowed a Sony ebook reader and Dave had The Witches as an ebook, so I gave it a shot. At Rod's suggestion, I read this myself rather than read it aloud to Kevin, though in retrospect, I'm sure would have liked it, so I may give it a go sometime after we read Matilda.

I love the way Dahl's child characters always outwit the adults and the way the endings aren't quite as neat as you expect from a children's book. This is good stuff.