Overview

Find out where the bestselling author ofCharlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG got all his wonderful story ideas in this autobiographical account of his childhood! 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 don't 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!

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9780140089172

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Throughout my young days at school and just afterwards a number of things happened to me that I have never forgotten. . . . Some are funny. Some are painful. Some are unpleasant. I suppose that is why I have always remembered them so vividly. Vividly indeed: with the intimate, confiding tone of a born storyteller, Dahl turns each of his family/school memories into a miniature adventure, thriller, or horror-story - with the earthy emphasis on pleasure (food, comradeship), fear, and pain. After a brief, charming slice of family-history, explaining how his Norwegian parents came to live and prosper in Wales, Dahl gets right down to business. From the years at Llandaff Cathedral School (ages 7-9, 1923-25), there's a candy-by-candy tribute to the local sweet-shop, site of The Great Mouse Plot : Roald and friends, fed up with the meanness of filthy sweet-shop-owner Mrs. Pratchett, secretly put a dead mouse in the Gobstopper jar - but suffered mightily for their glorious prank. (Mrs. P. reported the crime to the Headmaster - unleashing the first of many school-career canings, all described in gruesome, technicolor detail.) Summer vacations in Norway are also recalled in a mixture of ecstasy - the fish, the scenery - and agony: an operation for adenoid removal without any anesthetic. And the extremes of pleasure and pain continue through Dahl's years at two English boarding schools: homesickness, sadistic Matrons and Masters, practical jokes, the indignities of fagging (warming up the toilet-seat for older boys), chocolates. . . and, always, the dreaded Headmaster's cane. ( By now I am sure you will be wondering why I lay so much emphasis upon school beatings in these pages. The answer is that. . . I couldn't get over it. I never have got over it. ) Some readers may be put off by Dahl's style here - chatty, bedtime-story-ish, deceptively avuncular. Others might not take to the British references (no special explanations for a US audience), or the particularly British approach - full of bitter humor and odd relish - to grisly, gory matters. But those who've appreciated Dahl in various forms will find both the master of chills and the lover of chocolate here - in a fine, juicy collage of funny/awful boyhood highlights. (Kirkus Reviews)

In Boy Dahl gives us an autobiographical account of his early life, his childhood in Norway and Wales, and his fearful experiences at public school. As a very small boy at St Peter's, he was terrified of the matron (who, he tells us breathlessly, 'disliked small boys very much indeed'), and even more scared of her enormous bosom, which looked like 'a battering-ram or the bows of an ice-breaker or maybe a couple of high-explosive bombs'. In Going Solo he recounts his days after leaving Repton, his secondary school, when he joined the Shell Company. When he complained that Egpyt was 'too dusty', he was sent to East Africa, where he had the hair-raising adventures he had longed for, experiences that taught him 'how to look after myself in a way that no young person can ever do by staying in civilisation'. When the shadow of war stretched across Africa, he joined the RAF and became a daring fighter pilot across the Mediterranean. Dahl tells these tales of his youth with that strange blend of innocence and fascination for life's horrors which hallmarks his fiction. A thrilling read. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Roald Dahl(1916-1990) was born in Wales of Norwegian parents. He spent his childhood in England and, at age eighteen, went to work for the Shell Oil Company in Africa. When World War II broke out, he joined the Royal Air Force and became a fighter pilot. At the age of twenty-six he moved to Washington, D.C., and it was there he began to write. His first short story, which recounted his adventures in the war, was bought byThe Saturday Evening Post, and so began a long and illustrious career. After establishing himself as a writer for adults, Roald Dahl began writing children's stories in 1960 while living in England with his family. His first stories were written as entertainment for his own children, to whom many of his books are dedicated. Roald Dahl is now considered one of the most beloved storytellers of our time. Although he passed away in 1990, his popularity continues to increase as his fantastic novels, includingJames and the Giant Peach,Matilda,The BFG, andCharlie and the Chocolate Factory, delight an ever-growing legion of fans. Learn more about Roald Dahl on the official Roald Dahl Web site-www.roalddahl.com

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