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There’s George’s Marvellous Medicine in which George’s horrible grandmother gets her comeuppance and gets very tall and then very, very small after drinking a magical mixture of fertiliser, toothpaste, shampoo and other miscellaneous household and farmyard items. Then there’s The BFG who sends little human ‘beans’ lovely dreams which he keeps in jars, and eats horrible snozzcumbers because the other horrid, trogglehumper-spreading giants bully him. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a classic which cannot be left out - who wouldn’t want to be heir to a chocolate factory where money is seemingly no object? Then there’s James and the Giant Peach (ace), The Twits, Matilda, and Fantastic Mr Fox (all fab). The Witches gave me nightmares. It’s worth noting that nearly all of these great books are now great films.
The book which typifies Roald Dahl for me though is the scrumptious-galumptious tale that is The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me. The giraffe, the pelly and a monkey form the ladderless window-cleaning company in the building which little Billy dreams of turning into the sweetshop. Team them with an eccentric old English aristocrat and you’ve got the bones of a truly awesome story. Flesh it out with magical sweets, a jewellery robbery, Edward Lear-esque songs, Blake’s illustrations, and words such as ‘glumptious’ and ‘globgobbler’ and you’ve got yourself a classic.
The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me is an unbelievably simple concept. A small lonely child finds great friends who help him turn his life around and they live happily ever after. The same can be said for most of Dahl’s books. Essentially, his books are about normal children with normal lives to whom fantastic things happen. What makes Dahl brilliant is that he could always add just the right amounts of magic, fantastical elements and outrageous characters to entertain, to generate giggles in small children and adults alike, and to still make them memorable as sweet stories of friendship and childhood which outclass anything else. You remember a Dahl book. Short and sweet, but still with all these elements, The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me typifies all the things that I love about reading Roald Dahl. Besides, who would want a mars bar when they could have a giant wangdoodle, a nishnobbler, a gumglotter or a jujube (apparently a real word)? They sound so much more fun.
One of my favourite lines, from Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator; "Oh my painted ants! Oh my sainted pants!" I found that hilariously funny at the time. I had an audio cassette of The Witches (full dramatisation, narrated by Christian Rodska as the protagonist, who has an amazing voice) and one of Esio Trot read by Michael Palin, two of my most treasured childhood memories.
It's interesting to read some of his work for adults, in collections such as Henry Sugar and Switch Bitch (two short story anthologies I've read; there are many more). They're intended for adults and some are very explicit, but they're good books, and it shows another side to a talented author.
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