Roald Dahl

The Twits
$5.99
I read this to my 4 year old son and my 5 1/2 year old daughter who both adored this book and belly laughed the entire way through each of the chapters. I have started introducing chapter books for some time trying to increase listening skills and really holding their interest. This book did exactly that. The Twits play their mean clever tricks on one another for the entire book and one is just a bit funnier than the next but what comes around goes around as you will find out. I read a negative review on this book and I disagree. You can't shelter your child from everything, and in some cases I believe it is not to the child's benefit to shelter them- instead I believe if they are raised with love and respect for others, they will really be able to enjoy this intelligently written, hilarious, not to be taken seriously, book. If an adult is buying this book to read to a child, you will find it just as enjoyable and amusing as the child will. Fun for all.

George's Marvelous Medicine
$5.99
My son read and reread this book. He is a tough cookie to get to read a book. This is his new favorite book.

Fantastic Mr. Fox
$5.99
My 6 and 8 yr olds really enjoyed listening to this story. Mr Fox was getting desperate at one point in the story and my 6yr. old got a little scared, but she was able to keep listening to hear the happy ending. They have listened at home at bed time and in the car. I think this has been a worthwhile purchase.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
$6.99
I hated the original Willy Wonka movie. Gene Wilder was too smarmy, Charlie too bland and the Oompa-Loompas way too creepy. Hence, I saw no reason to read the book that inspired my loathing. But when I learned that Roald Dahl, author of the book, had actually dissociated himself from the Wonka adaptation, I though that maybe, just maybe, I might like the book.

And I loved it!!

The book outdoes the movie in every way. Charlie and his extended family are dirt poor and hence always hungry. A yearly birthday candy bar is all they can afford. The other children, winners of Wonka's Golden Tickets, are hopelessly sniveling, selfish, spoiled and self-absorbed. When they visit Wonka's chocolate factory, they are dispatched by their own greed and lack of discipline. The scenes where Veruca Salt is disposed of by a gang of shell-shucking squirrels is perfect. Dahl's Wonka is hyperkinetic, elfin and passionate about candy. He seems not to know or care where the disappearing children have gone. The Oompa Loompas are not the lumpish candy-men of the movie but a race of tiny people transplanted willingly to the factory. The only slightly disturbing part of the book was the way the nasty kiddos were got rid of, since they could have been drowned, incinerated, or blown up like balloons. But even this discomfort is addressed by book's end.

The best part of the book was Dahl's inventive cleverness about dream up new and wonderful candies. Edible pillows, cavity-filling caramels and sweets that let you spit in many colors were just a few of his delectable concoctions. As were the long songs sung by the Oompa Loompas to celebrate the removal of bad kids. Schindelman's illustrations gave just enough of a hint at the action without taking the reader's imagination entirely off the hook. Dahl's moral sense is an important subtext throughout the book. Greed and boorishness are punished; virtue, good manners and self-restraint are rewarded. Compare that with the ethical confusion of the Wilder film.

Definitely one of my favorite books in search of an adaptation that is true to the Dahl's spirit, which rewards the habit of reading books and other good behavior, even among the needy.