Charlie and The Chocolate Factory

Recommended for people who:
a) love chocolate like a first-born
b) are prone to flights-of-fancy
c) will root for the underdog and hope that nasty, ill-mannered gits will meet a sticky end.

Charlie Bucket and his family are poor. And honest. And likeable. And in the time-honoured tradition of poor/honest/likeable kids, Charlie will go through the usual pangs of hunger, desperation and out-of-reach cravings before he finally hits pay dirt (read, chocolate)

There is also a candymaker, Mr.Willy Wonka : eccentric genius with a touch of madness and a smidgen of childish glee. He owns the greatest chocolate factory in the world. But fear of rivals and spies had made Wonka keep the factory away from public-eye. Work continued, but not a single employee was seen entering or leaving the place.

Then one fine day, Wonka holds a contest in which five Golden Tickets are hidden under the wrappers of his candy bars. Whoever finds them will win: a daylong tour of the factory and a lifetime’s supply of Wonka treats.

After many nearly-there moments, Charlie turns out to be the fifth lucky winner. And thus begins the madcap tour. Along the way, the other four, truly horrible children get their just desserts (excuse the pun). Charlie…good, well-mannered Charlie gets a truly delightful prize at the end of the day.

I wouldn’t say I loved the book…more like, I was rooting for Charlie. The poor chappie had a truly sad start…what with hunger pangs and squalid living conditions and getting a chocolate bar once a year and living in a town where the greatest chocolate factory exists (that was jus’cruel!).

As a sweet-addict, I did slaver over the delicious descriptions that could be found after every ten pages or so. My favourite passage was:

'Mr Willy Wonka can make marshmallows that taste of violets, and rich
caramels that change colour every ten seconds as you suck them, and little
feathery sweets that melt away deliciously the moment you put them between your
lips. He can make chewing-gum that never loses its taste, and sugar balloons
that you can blow up to enormous sizes before you pop them with a pin and gobble
them up. And, by a most secret method, he can make lovely blue birds' eggs with
black spots on them, and when you put one of these in your mouth, it gradually
gets smaller and smaller until suddenly there is nothing left except a tiny
little pink sugary baby bird sitting on the tip of your tongue’

*eyes closed and look of pure ecstasy*

The Twits

Say hello to the nastiest, stinkiest, flies-buzzing-in-an-angry-circle-around-them couple in Dahl-Land. Say hello to Mr. & Mrs. Twit. Scary to behold and blighted with fiendish temperaments, the Twits are a match made in hell.

They play nasty tricks on each other…..they stick extra-strong glue on branches; catch hapless birds and make bird-pie…and they train a family of monkeys to do upside-down circus tricks. Twit-land is a child’s worst nightmare.

But this is a Dahl book. So devious plots shall be devised. Birds and Animals shall have their revenge. The Twits shall get their comeuppance. And children can shut the book with a sigh of relief.

The Witches

In bizarro-Dahl world, witches break all the stereotypes that fairy-tales have led us to believe. No pointy-hats, no black –cloaks, no broom-sticks...nuh-uh!
Here’s how you actually recognize them:
# 1: They always wear gloves…always. Why? To hide their thin curvy claws.
#2: They are bald. So be prepared for hideous, scratchy wigs.
#3: Their nostrils (or nose-holes as Dahl delicately puts it) are larger than those of normal people.
#4: The pupils of a witch’s eyes constantly change colour.
#5: They don’t have toes.
#6: Their spit is blue. So watch out for ink-blue phlegm.

Yep, who knew? And here’s something to up the chill-down-your-spine factor: They can be anybody...ANYBODY...ordinary, well-dressed ladies holding ordinary, humdrum jobs. And they loathe children...am talking big-time, turning-them-into-rodents loathe!!!

Now say hello to our protagonist : a wide-eyed, orphaned boy who lives with his adored grandmother. Gran is a plump, feisty old lady who smokes black cigars and warns her grandson about the twisted ways of The Witches. As luck would have it, the l’il boy has a run-in with an entire convention of the nasty lot. Some significant chaos and hi-jinx later, he is promptly converted into a mouse by the Grand High Witch herself.

Yep, things definitely look ugly.

Will the newest entrant into rodent-land survive? Will the witches succeed in their plan to wipe England clean of all snotty-nosed children? And what role does our mighty gran play in the proceedings?

A fun book...a twisted book...an ironical book.....a book that comes second only to Matilda in originality and hideously scary villains (Miss.Trunchball and The Grand High Witch might have belonged to the same family tree). People dissect the book and claim that it’s too scary for young readers. I say, the small-people aren’t fazed so easily. Plant the book in their eager lil hands and watch them devour it.

Kiddie-Parade

The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me:
I imagine myself curled up in a squishy bed surrounded by a trio of tiny-tots. As I read aloud, their attention is captured. The scruffy l’il boy stops tugging his sister’s pigtails. She in turn stops sticking her tongue out and making rude noises. And the third one unglues himself from the fascinating sight of the family-dog licking itself, long enough to get hooked.

*Hypothetical Happy Place*.That’s what Dahl’s kiddie-books do to you. And this banana-yellow covered book is one more of his ludicrous tales. Who else but Dahl would think of a ladderless window-cleaning company being assigned to a trio of animals? So we have a giraffe (whose long neck makes ladders redundant)...a pelican (with a nice deep beak to hold the cleaning water) and a sprightly little monkey (to do the actual wiping and polishing). Flaky? Yes. Fiendishly clever as some other Dahl Books? No. And yet…it is endearing in it's simplicity.




Esio Trot:
Mr.Hoppy is a lonely,middle-aged man. And he’s in love with the attractive Mrs.Silver, a widow who lives in the apartment below him. Being painfully shy, he never musters up the courage to proclaim his devotion. Mrs.Silver, oblivious to the angst in the balcony above, is too busy showering affection on her titch of a tortoise, Alfie.

While the two neighbours exchange pleasantries, Mrs.Silver reveals that her greatest sorrow is that Alfie never grows...not a bit. The excitable Hoppy sees this is as a chance to win the lady’s affections.

Esio Trot is all about the high-falutin’ plan he undertakes. While the premise was entertaining, my grouse was with the way Mrs. Silver was projected. Woman are not as dumb as she apparently appears. And whatever happened to coming clean at the end of the tale, Mr.Hoppy??? t-ut t-ut

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

Oh my Sainted Pants!....Oh my Painted Ants! :)

I think the following poem, rendered by the formidable Miss.Tibbs in honour of the President deserves special mention. Dahl's comic timing and astuteness were best seen in his whacky poems. So here goes:

The Nurse's Song

This mighty man of whom I sing,
The greatest of them all,
Was once a teeny little thing,
Just eighteen inches tall.

I knew him as a tiny tot,
I nursed him on my knee.
I used to sit him on the pot
And wait for him to wee.

I always washed between his toes,
And cut his little nails.
I brushed his hair and wiped his nose
And weighed him on the scales.

Through happy childhood days he strayed,
As all nice children should.
I smacked him when he disobeyed,
And stopped when he was good.

It soon began to dawn on me
He wasn't very bright,
Because when he was twenty-three
He couldn't read or write.

"What shall we do?" his parents sob.
"The boy has got the vapours!
He couldn't even get a job
Delivering the papers!"

"Ah-ha," I said, "this little clot
Could be a politician."
"Nanny," he cried, "Oh Nanny, what
A super proposition!"

"Okay," I said, "let's learn and note
The art of politics.
Let's teach you how to miss the boat
And how to drop some bricks,
And how to win the people's vote
And lots of other tricks.

Let's learn to make a speech a day
Upon the T.V. screen,
In which you never never say
Exactly what you mean.

And most important,
by the way,
In not to let your teeth decay,
And keep your fingers clean.

And now that I am eighty-nine,
It's too late to repent.
The fault was mine the little swine
Became the President.

James and The Giant Peach

Mr.Dahl strikes again. ‘James and The Giant Peach’ begs to be read aloud...aloud to an open-mouthed, hanging-on-to-your-every-word, filled-with-awe pre-teen audience.

There’s an ill-treated orphan called James Henry Trotter who’s blighted by a pair of wicked aunts: Aunt Spiker and Aunt Sponge. There’s a musically-inclined grasshopper, an over-assertive centipede, a gloomy earthworm, a pro-active spider, a genteel ladybird, a timid glowworm and a silkworm who…well…sleeps. (Please excuse the over-use of adjectives. Dahl’s writing does that to you!) And then, there’s a giant peach.

Add to that Roald Dahl’s imagery, satire and nonsensical poems. What you have is a child’s *Happy Place*. Dahl had written this book when his baby son Theo had a terrible accident. Escaping into a fantasy-land for a few hours each day helped him through the crisis. And the grand storyteller does the same for all of us. The world he creates is fantastical and improbable. And in it’s improbability, you find a much-needed escape from the daily woes.

Percy Jackson and The Last Olympian

A Pegasus lands on the hood of your step-dad’s Prius...you have to blow up a monster-infested cruise ship...you have dreams (read: visions) everytime you take a relaxing nap……the girl you like is still harbouring strong feelings for a handsome demigod; who incidentally happens to be providing the host body for the mightiest of all villains……oh and did I mention that the evil forces are planning to take over Mount Olympus and raze Manhattan to the ground? If that's not enough, here's something to chew on : the only way you stand a fighting chance is by taking a dip in the River of Death.

Yep, Percy Jackson…the smart mouthed, teen demi-god has his work cut out. His sixteenth birthday is fast approaching and it’s time for ‘The Great Prophecy' to unfold. The Titans are advancing with a mighty army in tow. The dreaded Typhon has been freed and is slowly thundering towards New York……all set to destroy the Olympian domain.The biggest war…the end of civilization all rests on Percy’s single decision.

As he would say......no pressure.

Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian is a truly fantastic tying up of all the loose ends. Truths are revealed...mistakes are rectified...character is built...and all the protagonists come into their own. Equal importance has been given to miniscule characters (a fact which Riordan should be applauded for, since it ties up with the main message he wants to give through this series)

The war which has been looming over the past four books, breaks free in a burst of Grade-A action...hi-jinx…special effects…fantastical creatures……and surprises being revealed at regular intervals. Olympians, Titans, Gods, Demigods, Minor-Gods, Monsters, Nature Spirits and several unexpected allies give you a panoramic war-scene that gets the adrenaline rushing.

Fine...fine book, this

A passage by Neil Gaiman (..from American Gods)

~I believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.



~I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass.



~I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.



~I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like Martians in War of the Worlds.



~I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.



~I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead)



~I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.



~I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.



~I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." — Neil Gaiman (American Gods)


~

Matilda

Roald Dahl is the grand-daddy of children’s fiction. And weirdly enough, I hadn’t read a single one of his books. Eventually, good sense prevailed and lo!......there’s Matilda.

Matilda is a child-prodigy. Barely five-years old, she is wise and articulate. She is blessed with a thirst for reading and is also cursed with the vilest excuses for parents. They are self-absorbed, mindless twits who could have crushed the will of a lesser child. But for Matilda, exacting revenge on the Wormwoods (aptly named) is literally child’s play.

School however is a whole new-ball game. Enter Miss.Trunchball (gnnnnnh!!!). Humoungous, horrifying to behold……she cusses like crazy …snorts and snarls like an enraged rhino and has all the students & teachers alike, crapping in their pants. There’s also the ethereal Miss.Honey, Matilda’s class teacher. Kind to a fault and poorer than a church-mouse, she hopes to develop Matilda’s astounding talent. But Miss.Honey has a secret…a sad, tragic past…a past which Matilda can rectify; thanks to her brains and a newly discovered power.

Dahl’s writing style is addictive…it is dark, humourous and non-condescending towards children. No helpless billy-goats here. Matilda may be a wee lil thing…but she displays a maturity and soundness of thought that would put most adults to shame.

Yep, loved the book. Definitely heading out for The BFG now.

Am not given to gush-fests and rantings about shoes. Not much into bling-gg either. But there’s something about this(these?) super-classy pair of sneakers in fire-proof, gold-plated kevlar.....that gets me right there. :)