Synopses & Reviews
Roald Dahl was a champion of the underdog and all things littlein this case, an orphaned boy oppressed by two nasty, self-centered aunts. How James escapes his miserable life with the horrible aunts and becomes a hero is a Dahlicious fantasy of the highest order. You will never forget resourceful little James and his new family of magically overgrown insectsa ladybug, a spider, a grasshopper, a glowworm, a silkworm, and the chronic complainer, a centipede with a hundred gorgeous shoes. Their adventures aboard a luscious peach as large as a house take them across the Atlantic Ocean, through waters infested with peach-eating sharks and skies inhabited by malevolent Cloudmen, to a ticker-tape parade in New York City. This happily ever after contemporary fairy tale is a twentieth-century classic that every child deserves to know. And Lane Smith's endearingly funny illustrations are a perfect match for the text.
Review
"The four outrageous stories in Switch Bitch certainly do . . . In each case Roald Dahl sets up a realistic situation, then loads it with amazing and fantastic sexual possibilities. Then, somewhere this or the other side of pornography, he produces a denouement of the banana-skin kind--black banana-skin at that." New Statesman
Review
"One of the most widely read and influential writers of our generation"
Review
"The absolute master of the twist in the tale"
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"Dahl is too good a storyteller to become predictable"
Review
"Dahl's phenomenal popularity among children speaks for his breathless storytelling charms."—
Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
"Dahl is too good a storyteller to become predictable." --The Daily Telegraph In Switch Bitch four tales of seduction and suspense are told by the grand master of the short story, Roald Dahl. Topping and tailing this collection are "The Visitor" and "Bitch," stories featuring Dahl's notorious hedonist Oswald Hendryks Cornelius (or plain old Uncle Oswald) whose exploits are frequently as extraordinary as they are scandalous. In the middle, meanwhile, are "The Great Switcheroo" and "The Last Act," two stories exploring a darker side of desire and pleasure. In the black comedies of Switch Bitch Roald Dahl brilliantly captures the ins and outs, highs and lows of sex.
Roald Dahl, the brilliant and worldwide acclaimed author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many more classics for children, also wrote scores of short stories for adults. These delightfully disturbing tales have often been filmed and were most recently the inspiration for the West End play Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales by Jeremy Dyson. Roald Dahl's stories continue to make readers shiver today.
Synopsis
In Switch Bitch four tales of seduction and suspense are told by the grand master of the short story, Roald Dahl.
Topping and tailing this collection are The Visitor and Bitch, stories featuring Dahl's notorious hedonist Oswald Hendryks Cornelius (or plain old Uncle Oswald) whose exploits are frequently as extraordinary as they are scandalous. In the middle, meanwhile, are The Great Switcheroo and The Last Act, two stories exploring a darker side of desire and pleasure.
In the black comedies of Switch Bitch Roald Dahl brilliantly captures the ins and outs, highs and lows of sex.
'Dahl is too good a storyteller to become predictable' Daily Telegraph
Roald Dahl, the brilliant and worldwide acclaimed author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many more classics for children, also wrote scores of short stories for adults. These delightfully disturbing tales have often been filmed and were most recently the inspiration for the West End play, Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales by Jeremy Dyson. Roald Dahl's stories continue to make readers shiver today.
Synopsis
It's the 50th anniversary of James and the Giant Peach! Come celebrate and join James Trotter and his friendsÑGrasshopper, Earthworm, Miss Spider - on an adventure inside a giant magical peach.
Synopsis
Where did Roald Dahl get all of his wonderful ideas for stories? From his own life, of course! As full of excitement and the unexpected as his world-famous, bestselling books, Roald Dahl?s tales of his own childhood are completely fascinating and fiendishly funny.
Synopsis
Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory is opening at last! But only five lucky children will be allowed inside. And the winners are: Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt, Violet Beauregarde, Mike Teavee, and Charlie Bucket, Our Hero, a boy who is honest and kind, brave and true, and good and ready for the wildest time of his life!
Synopsis
Charlie and Willy Wonka are back, this time in a fantastic journey to outer space in their glass elevator.
Synopsis
Roald Dahl fans will rejoice at the opportunity to bring their favorite books and characters to life. Five of Dahls hugely popular, beloved books have been adapted into winning plays for children. With useful tips on staging, props, and costumes, these plays can be produced with a minimum amount of resources and experience. Teachers, parents, and children everywhere will recognize Quentin Blakes appealing classic cover art and will find these easy-to-perform plays to be a great source of entertainment!
Synopsis
Now that Charlie has won the chocolate factory, what's next? Even wilder adventures, that'swhat! Join him, Grandpa Joe, and, of course, Willy Wonka for the amazing, intergalactic sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!
Synopsis
Celebrating 30 years of a beloved Roald Dahl classic!
For thirty years, readers have been enchanted by this story of young Sophie and the benevolent Big Friendly Giant--inspired by Roald Dahl's own granddaughter. Come celebrate and join them as they take on the Bonecruncher, the Bloodbottler, and other monsters to help make the world a better place for children everywhere!
Synopsis
Roald Dahl's personal stories together in one edition!
Where did Roald Dahl get all of his wonderful ideas for stories? From his own life, of course! Boy includes tales of sweetshops and chocolate, mean old ladies, and the Great Mouse Plot. And then Going Solo tells of how, when he grew up, Roald Dahl left England for Africa and later went flying with the Royal Air Force.
Synopsis
Mr. Hoppy is in love with his neighbor, Mrs. Silver, but she is in love with her pet tortoise. Mr. Hoppy comes up with an idea to get Mrs. Silver's attention. If his plan works, Mrs. Silver will certainly fall in love with him. After all, everyone knows the way to a woman's heart is through her tortoise.
Synopsis
Twice turned into a feature film, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a delectable classic about a child's dreams and the eccentric chocolate-maker who makes them come true. When Willy Wonka's hallowed chocolate factory holds a worldwide contest awarding tours to the lucky, five children emerge as winners, including a glutton, a gum- chewing nitwit, a spoiled brat, and a TV addict. Only Charlie Bucket, the story's earnest hero, stands to win the exotic riches of Wonka's empire-if he avoids the pitfalls of his fellow contestants and stays true to his heart. Ingenious and entertaining, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a true modern classic.
Synopsis
Who needs a ladder when you?ve got a giraffe with an extending neck? The Ladderless Window-Cleaning Company certainly doesn?t. They don?t need a pail, either, because they have a pelican with a bucket-sized beak. With a monkey to do the washing and Billy as their manager, this business is destined for success.
Synopsis
George's grouchy grandma needs a taste of her own medicine, and George knows just the right ingredients to put into it!
Synopsis
Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory is opening at last, and only five lucky children will be allowed inside. But what they find is even wilder than any of the wild rumors, they've heard!
Synopsis
Mr. Fox is surrounded, and he's going to have to come up with a truly fantastic plan to dig himself out of trouble this time.
Synopsis
To the Gregg family, hunting is just plain fun. To the girl who lives next door, it's just plain terrible. She tries to be polite. She tries to talk them out of it, but the Greggs go too far, and the little girl turns her Magic Finger on them.
Synopsis
Going Solo is the action-packed tale of Roald Dahl?s exploits as a World War II pilot. Learn all about his encounters with the enemy, his worldwide travels, the life-threatening injuries he sustained in a plane accident, and the rest of his sometimes bizarre, often unnerving, and always colorful adventures.
Synopsis
Roald Dahl's perennial bestseller about a boy's magical journey across the sea, James and the Giant Peach, celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in 2011. When James, a boy stuck living with his cantankerous aunts, is given magic crystals by a sympathetic wizard, he accidentally drops them at the foot of the peach tree outside his house, causing one of the fruits to grow the size of a house. Inside he finds oversized insects who promise him deliverance from his aunts, and soon the giant peach is rolling downhill, bound for the Atlantic Ocean and beyond on a magnificent adventure that will take James and his new friends far indeed.
Synopsis
A dazzling volume containing two classic Roald Dahl novels!
Charlie Bucket and Willy Wonka have been children's favorites for generations. Now their two books are available in one stunning edition! In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the gates of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory are opening at last . . . and only five children will be allowed inside. And then in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Charlie and Willy Wonka are back in a fantastic journey to outer space.
Synopsis
annys dad had a secret, but now the secrets out and its going to lead Danny on the adventure of a lifetime.
Synopsis
Roald Dahl's inimitable style and humor shine in this collection of poems about mischievous and mysterious animals. From Stingaling the scorpion to Crocky-Wock the crocodile, Dahl's animals are nothing short of ridiculous. A clever pig with an unmentionable plan to save his own bacon and an anteater with an unusually large appetite are among the characters created by Dahl in these timeless rhymes. This new, larger edition is perfect for reading aloud and makes Quentin Blake's celebrated illustrations even more enjoyable.
"Will elicit a loud 'Yuck.' In other words, children will love them." (Children's Book Review Service)
Synopsis
Now back in print along with Roald Dahl’s My Uncle Oswald, a surprisingly naughty and hilarious adult book by the beloved children’s author
Great wit, melancholy, and a sense of the erotic that would make even a fan of Fifty Shades of Grey blush pervade this collection of four adult short stories by Roald Dahl. Included here are "The Visitor" and "Bitch," featuring the hilariously vivid exploits of the notorious Uncle Oswald, as well as "The Great Switcheroo" and "The Last Act."
In these taut black comedies of human weakness and unexpected reversal, Dahl captures the delicious thrill of sexual triumph and the galling deflation of defeat.
Synopsis
Now that he's won the chocolate factory, what's next for Charlie?
Last seen flying through the sky in a giant elevator in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie Bucket's back for another adventure. When the giant elevator picks up speed, Charlie, Willy Wonka, and the gang are sent hurtling through space and time. Visiting the world' first space hotel, battling the dreaded Vermicious Knids, and saving the world are only a few stops along this remarkable, intergalactic joyride.
Synopsis
Captured by a giant!
The BFG is no ordinary bone-crunching giant. He is far too nice and jumbly. It's lucky for Sophie that he is. Had she been carried off in the middle of the night by the Bloodbottler, or any of the other giantsrather than the BFGshe would have soon become breakfast. When Sophie hears that the giants are flush-bunking off to England to swollomp a few nice little chiddlers, she decides she must stop them once and for all. And the BFG is going to help her!
Synopsis
A taste of her own medicine.
George is alone in the house with Grandma. The most horrid, grizzly old grunion of a grandma ever. She needs something stronger than her usual medicine to cure her grouchiness. A special grandma medicine, a remedy for everything. And George knows just what to put into it. Grandma's in for the surprise of her lifeand so is George, when he sees the results of his mixture!
Synopsis
Nobody outfoxes Fantastic Mr. Fox!
Someone's been stealing from the three meanest farmers around, and they know the identity of the thiefit's Fantastic Mr. Fox! Working alone they could never catch him; but now fat Boggis, squat Bunce, and skinny Bean have joined forces, and they have Mr. Fox and his family surrounded. What they don't know is that they're not dealing with just any foxMr. Fox would rather die than surrender. Only the most fantastic plan can save him now.
Synopsis
Can Danny and his father outsmart the villainous Mr. Hazell?
Danny has a life any boy would lovehis home is a gypsy caravan, he's the youngest master car mechanic around, and his best friend is his dad, who never runs out of wonderful stories to tell. But one night Danny discovers a shocking secret that his father has kept hidden for years. Soon Danny finds himself the mastermind behind the most incredible plot ever attempted against nasty Victor Hazell, a wealthy landowner with a bad attitude. Can they pull it off? If so, Danny will truly be the champion of the world.
Synopsis
Where did Roald Dahl get all of his wonderful ideas for stories? From his own life, of course! As full of excitement and the unexpected as his world-famous, best-selling books, Roald Dahl's tales of his own childhood are completely fascinating and fiendishly funny. Did you know that Roald Dahl nearly lost his nose in a car accident? Or that he was once a chocolate candy tester for Cadbury's? Have you heard about his involvement in the Great Mouse Plot of 1924? If not, you dont yet know all there is to know about Roald Dahl. Sure to captivate and delight you, the boyhood antics of this master storyteller are not to be missed!
Synopsis
An ancient spell, 140 tortoises, and a little bit of magic
Mr. Hoppy is in love with his neighbor, Mrs. Silver; but she is in love with someone elseAlfie, her pet tortoise. With all her attention focused on Alfie, Mrs. Silver doesnt even know Mr. Hoppy is alive. And Mr. Hoppy is too shy to even ask Mrs. Silver over for tea. Then one day Mr. Hoppy comes up with a brilliant idea to get Mrs. Silver's attention. If Mr. Hoppy's plan works, Mrs. Silver will certainly fall in love with him. After all, everyone knows the way to a womans heart is through her tortoise.
Synopsis
Who needs a ladder when youve got a giraffe with an extended neck? The Ladderless Window-Cleaning Company certainly doesn't. They dont need a pail, either, because they have a pelican with a bucket-sized beak. With a monkey to do the washing and Billy as their manager, this business is destined for success. Now they have their big breaka chance to clean all 677 windows of the Hampshire House, owned by the richest man in all of England! Thats exciting enough, but along the way there are surprises and adventures beyond their wildest window-washing dreams.
Synopsis
What happens when the hunter becomes the hunted? To the Gregg family, hunting is just plain fun. To the girl who lives next door, it's just plain horrible. She tries to be polite. She tries to talk them out of it, but the Greggs only laugh at her. Then one day the Greggs go too far, and the little girl turns her Magic Finger on them. When she's very, very angry, the little girl's Magic Finger takes over. She really cant control it, and now it's turned the Greggs into birds! Before they know it, the Greggs are living in a nest, and that's just the beginning of their problems
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Synopsis
Superb stories, daring deeds, fantastic adventures!
Going Solo is the action-packed tale of Roald Dahl's exploits as a World War II pilot. Learn all about his encounters with the enemy, his worldwide travels, the life-threatening injuries he sustained in a plane accident, and the rest of his sometimes bizarre, often unnerving, and always colorful adventures. Told with the same irresistible appeal that has made Roald Dahl one of the world's best-loved writers, Going Solo brings you directly into the action and into the mind of this fascinating man.
About the Author
CHILDHOOD
Roald Dahl was born in Llandaff, Wales on September 13th 1916. His parents were Norwegian and he was the only son of a second marriage. His father, Harald, and elder sister Astri died when Roald was just three. His mother, Sofie, was left to raise two stepchildren and her own four children (Alfhild, Roald, Else and Asta). Roald was her only son. He remembered his mother as “a rock, a real rock, always on your side whatever you’d done. It gave me the most tremendous feeling of security”. Roald based the character of the grandmother in The Witches on his mother - it was his tribute to her.
The young Roald loved stories and books. His mother told Roald and his sisters tales about trolls and other mythical Norwegian creatures. “She was a great teller of tales,” Roald said, “Her memory was prodigious and nothing that ever happened to her in her life was forgotten.” As an older child, Roald enjoyed adventure stories - “Captain Marryat was one of my favourites” – before going on to read Dickens and Thackeray as well as short-story writer Ambrose Bierce.
His father Harald was, as Roald recalled in Boy, a tremendous diary-writer. “I still have one of his many notebooks from the Great War of 1914-18. Every single day during those five war years he would write several pages of comment and observation about the events of the time.”
Roald himself kept a secret diary from the age of eight. “To make sure that none of my sisters got hold of it and read it, I used to put it in a waterproof tin box tied to a branch at the very top of an enormous conker tree in our garden. I knew they couldn’t climb up there. Then every day I would go up myself and get it out and sit in the tree and make the entries for the day.”
Roald’s parents seem to have instilled in him a number of character traits. In Boy, he talks of his father’s interest in “lovely paintings and fine furniture” as well as gardening. In spite of only having one arm, he was also a fine woodcarver. Paintings, furniture and gardening would all be passions of the adult Roald Dahl. Similarly, remembering his mother, in Roald Dahl’s Cookbook, he recalls “she had a crystal-clear intellect and a deep interest in almost everything under the sun, from horticulture to cooking to wine to literature to paintings to furniture to birds and dogs and other animals.” Roald might very well have been describing his adult self.
SCHOOL
Roald had an unhappy time at school. From the age of seven to nine, he attended Llandaff Cathedral School. His chief memories of this time, as described in Boy, are of trips to the sweet shop. The seeds of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were already being sown as young Roald and his four friends lingered outside the shop window, gazing in at the big glass jars of sweets and pondering such questions as how Gobstoppers change colour and whether rats might be turned into liquorice. Sherbert suckers were one of Roald’s favourites – “Each Sucker consisted of a yellow cardboard tube filled with sherbert powder, and there was a hollow liquorice straw sticking out of it… You sucked the sherbert up through the straw and when it was finished you ate the liqourice… The sherbet fizzed in your mouth, and if you knew how to do it, you could make white froth come out of your nostrils and pretend you were throwing a fit.”
Boarding at St. Peter’s prep school in Weston-Super-Mare, from 1925-9, proved less of a sweet experience for Roald. He was just nine years old when he arrived at St. Peters and had to contend with the twitching Latin Master Captain Hardcastle, the all-powerful Matron - a dead ringer for Miss Trunchball, who “disliked small boys very much indeed” and the cane-wielding Headmaster. Not surprisingly, Roald suffered from acute homesickness. At St. Peter’s, Roald got into the habit of writing to his mother once a week. He continued to do so until her death 32 years later. Later, when his own children went to boarding school, Roald wrote to them twice a week to brighten up the drudgery of their school days.
Roald was thirteen when he started at Repton, a famous public school in Derbyshire. He excelled at sports, particularly heavyweight boxing and squash, but was deemed by his English master to be “quite incapable of marshalling his thoughts on paper”. Whatever else he was forced to endure, there was one huge advantage to going to Repton. The school was close to Cadbury’s, one of England’s most famous chocolate factories and one which regularly involved the schoolboys in testing new varieties of chocolate bars.
Dahl’s unhappy time at school was to greatly influence his writing. He once said that what distinguished him from most other children’s writers was “this business of remembering what it was like to be young.” Roald’s childhood and schooldays are the subject of his autobiography Boy. WAR and ADVENTURE
At 18, rather than going to university, Roald joined the Public Schools Exploring Society’s expedition to Newfoundland. He then started work for Shell as a salesman in Dar es Salaam. He was 23 when war broke out and signed up with the Royal Air Force in Nairobi. At first, the station doctor balked at his height (6ft 6in or 2 metres) but he was accepted as a pilot officer and was trained on the birdplane Gladiator fighters, mainly in Iraq. He then flew to join his squadron in the Western Desert of Libya but crashed en-route.
Dahl’s exploits in the war are detailed in his autobiography Going Solo. They include having a luger pointed at his head by the leader of a German convoy, crashlanding in no-man’s land (and sustaining injuries that entailed having his nose pulled out and shaped!) and even surviving a direct hit during the Battle of Athens, when he was sufficiently recovered to fly again – this time in Hurricanes. Eventually, he was sent home as an invalid but transferred, in 1942, to Washington as an air attaché. It was there that he would meet an important writer who would set him on the path to a new career.
THE FIRST CHAPTER: ROALD BEGINS TO WRITE
In 1942, during his time in Washington, C S Forester, author of Captain Hornblower, took Roald to lunch. Forester was in America to publicise the British war effort and hoped Roald would describe his version of the war, which Forester would write up for the Saturday Evening Post. Roald chose to write down his experiences. Ten days after receiving the account, Forester wrote back “Did you know you were a writer? I haven’t changed a word.” He enclosed a cheque for $900 from the Post. The piece appeared anonymously in August 1942 under the title “Shot Down Over Libya”. Roald’s career as a writer was underway.
Roald Dahl’s first book for children was not, as many suppose, James and the Giant Peach but The Gremlins, a picture book published in 1943 and adapted from a script written for Disney. Walt Disney had invited the 25 year-old Roald to Hollywood, given him the use of a car and put him up at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The story of The Gremlins focused on the mischievous spirits that, according to RAF legend, cause aircraft-engine failures. In the end, the project to make a movie version was abandoned but the book was published. Roald was never very keen on The Gremlins and didn’t really think of it as a children’s book. Nevertheless, it caught Eleanor Roosevelt’s eye and Roald became a not infrequent guest at th
Table of Contents
Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life Preface
Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life
Parson's Pleasure
The Ratcatcher
Rummins
Mr. Hoddy
Mr. Feasey
The Champion of the World