A gun in her knickers

So, what kind of stories can be found in Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes? Revolting they may be, though utterly realistic and maybe much more interesting for nowadays children.

• First of all we have a moody arrogant Cinderella who dresses all nice, nylon pantyhose and all, goes to the disco to meet the prince, leaves the party in a hurry and in her underwear (!), one of the Ugly Sisters replaces the famous shoe with one of her own smelly boots. When this fits her, the prince goes all commando and slaughters the two Ugly Sisters, while Cinderella, repentive, agrees she cannot marry a maniac and chooses a nice kind modest marmelade maker. So the morale: Rather than marry up and have your head chopped off, rather date the jam guy and be happy.

Warning! The maniac Prince calls Cindy a slut at one point! Don't read this to your kids unless you want to spend ages trying to explain what that means!

•  Then we have a very entreprenorial mother of Jack, who gets eatten by the giant up the bean stalk because she hadn't washed properly, so there is some moral conclusion in this story as well:

"A bath" he said "it seems to pay
"I'm going to have one every day"

• Snow White is a little more decent then I would've imagined, when I tried to guess what Roald Dahl can make of a story where a lovely young maiden shares house with seven old guys. Turns out, they're only addict gamblers

Snow White's father, on the other hand, seems like a very cheeky king:

"Oh, what a nuissance! What a life!
'' Now I must find another wife!
(It's never easy for a king
To find himself that sort of thing)
He wrote to every magazine
And said: "I'm looking for a Queen"
Art least 10 000 girls replied
And asked to be the royal bride.
The king said with a shifty smile,
'I'd like to give each one a trial'

•  In the other stories, Goldy Locks get told off for the nasty little thing she is, breaking in like that and eating the poor bears' porridge, and Papa Bear has a lovely line to say to his son, here:

'Go upstairs, the Big Bear said,

Your porridge is upon the bed.

But as it's inside mademoiselle,

You'll have to eat her up as well.'

•  And finally, Little Red Riding Hood, not the most optimistic of stories as it starts with the grandma being eaten by the wolf, and no saving of the poor woman later on. Little Red, however, is one dangerous little girl, who hides a gun in her knickers and shoots the wolf dead then wears his skin instead of her silly childish riding hood. Later on, she reappears in the Three Little Pigs' story to take care of another big bad wolf, who's been watching some cartoons, apparently, since he is planning to blow up the brick house with dynamite. She shoots this wolf as well, but ruthless as she is, she turns the poor surviving piglet into a pigskin travelcase.

So there it is, Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl. Refreshing chilling humour on a scorching summer's day. It was worth it.

Business advice from Roald Dahl

From Revolting Rhymes - Jack and the Beanstalk

 Jack's mother said 'We`re stony broke!

' Go out and find some wealthy bloke

' Who'll buy our cow. Just say she's sound

' And worth at least a hundred pound

' But don't you dare let him know

' That she's as old as billy-o.  '

Formula 86 - Delayed Action Mouse Maker

How it works: 
It turns children into mice, but not instantly. The formula kicks in at a specified time. Useful if you want to lose your tracks before it happens.

Instructions:

• Boil the wrong end of a telescope until it softens, for about 21 hours(helps with the shrinking)
• Fry 45 mouse tails in hair oil
• Simmer the 45 tail-less mice in frog juice for 1 hour
• Take an alarm clock, set it at the time you want the formula to kick in, then roast it in the oven until it's crisp and tender
• Mix everything together and add a gruntle's egg
• Add the claw of a crabcruncher, the beak of a blabbersnitch, the snout of a globbersquirt, the tongue of a catspringer

Serve:

• Add one drop into a chocolate bar or a candy
• The ingredients above are enough for 1000 portions

---

Source: Text adapted from The Witches, by Roald Dahl, video from the movie The Witches (1990)

How to recognize a witch

Below you will find a series of very useful tips to keep your children safe from witches:

Image from the movie The Witches (1990)

How to recognize a real witch

• Real witches dress in ordinary clothes and look very much like ordinary women. They live in ordinary houses and they work in ordinary jobs. 
• They always wear gloves because they have claws on their hands
• They are bald as a boiled egg, so they always wear wigs. Pay special attention to women who scratch their heads a lot.
• They have large nose-holes and they can smell children from a great distance. To them, children smell like dogs' droppings.
• Their pupils change colour and you can see fire and ice in them
• They don't have toes but they force their feet into elegant shoes, so check for women who seem to have trouble walking
• Their spit is blue. (Although if you get to this step, it might already be a little late for you)

Why it's important to stay away from witches:

• They hate children with a red-hot sizzling hatred. 
• They are known to be guilty of at least the following: strange disapearances, children being sent into paintings upon their families' walls, transfigurations (into chicken, porpoises, mice, stone statues etc.)
• Their goal is to eliminate all children and their motto is :

One child a week is 52 a year
Squish them and squiggle them and make them disappear

---

Source: The Witches, by Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl Poetry

About television, in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

---

© 2006 Margaret Berg.
SOURCE

IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK — HE ONLY SEES!
'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY… USED… TO… READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!

---

More poetry by Roald Dahl, here.

Willie Wonka's Wonka-Vite

One more post about the Glass Elevator, then I'm off to the Witches, also by Roald Dahl.
Below, ingredients for Willie Wonka's Wonka Vite, if you want to make it for yourself. This extraordinary little pill takes 20 years off your life, just like that! I just need to find a really big cauldron and then I'm off to the local market to find an elephant suitcase!

---

Take a block of the finest chocolate weighing one ton (or twenty sackfuls of broken chocolate, whichever is easier). Place chocolate in very large cauldron and melt over red-hot furnace. When melted, lower the heat slightly so as not to burn the chocolate, but keep it boiling. Now add the following, in precisely the order given, stirring well all the time and allowing each item to dissolve before adding the next:

• The hoof of a manticore
• The trunk (and the suitcase) of an elephant
• The yolks of three eggs from a whiffle-bird
• A wart from a wart-hog
• The horn of a cow (it must be a loud horn)
• The front tail of a cockatrice
• Six ounces of sprunge from a young slimescraper
• Two hairs (and one rabbit) from the head of a hippocampus
• The beak of a red-breasted wilbatross
• A corn from the toe of a unicorn
• The four tentacles of a quadropuss
• The hip (and the po and the pot ) of a hippopotamus
• The snout of a proghopper 
• A mole from a mole
• The hide (and the seek) of a spotted whangdoodle
• The whites of twelve eggs from a tree-squeak
• The three feet of a snozzwanger (if you can't get three feet, one yard will do)
• The square-root of a South American abacus
• The fangs of a viper (it must be a vindscreen viper)
• The chest (and the drawers) of a wild grout

When all of the above are thoroughly dissolved, boil for a further twenty-seven days but do not stir. At the end of this time, all liquid will have evaporated and there will be left in the bottom of the cauldron only a hard brown lump the size of a football. Break this open with a hammer and in the very center of it you will find a very small round pill. This pill is Wonka-Vite.

---

There is also Vita-Wonk, which, as the name suggests, is the exact opposite of Wonka-Vite, making you older, if you need to make any adjustments!

Wish I could illustrate this...

1. 'I`ve done it!' cried the Chief Financial Adviser. 'Look at me everybody! I`ve balanced the budget!' And indeed he had. He stood proudly in the middle of the room with the enourmous 200 billion dollar budget balanced beautifully on the top of his bald head. Everyone clapped.

2. This is the Gilligrass Patent Fly-Trap: The fly climbs up the ladder on the left. He walks along the plank. He stops. He sniffs. He smells something good. He peers over the edge and sees the sugar lump. ‘Ah-ha!’ he cries. ‘Sugar!’ He is just about to climb down the string to reach it when he sees the basin of water below. ‘Ho-ho!’ he says. ‘It’s a trap! They want me to fall in!’ So he walks on, thinking what a clever fly he is. But as you see, I have left out one of the rungs in the ladder he goes down by, so he falls and breaks his neck.

---

*From Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.

The Nurse's Song - Roald Dahl

Miss Tibbs sings about President Gilligrass:

---

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 vapors!

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.

Politics and the Glass Elevator

As promissed, I return with a few notes on politics and politicians as depicted in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.

The VERMICIOUS KNIDS, from planet VERMES

Brief introduction: Willie Wonka's extraordinary means of transport, the Great Glass Elvator, is supposed to bring all of Charlie's family into the chocolate factory, where they would live happily ever after. Hysterical Grandma Georgina causes the Elevator to go off track and ends in Earth's orbit, on collision course with the Space Hotel.
As in most American movies, when something reaches orbit, it means NASA, it means Houston, we have a problem, the President of the USA gets in the picture, there are aliens, intervention teams, conspiracy theories etc.

President Lancelot R. Gilligrass is one ridiculous little man with a hero's name who carefully led through his decisions by Miss Tibbs, his nanny, now holding the position of Vice-President. He is also counselled by the Chief of Army, those of the Naval and Air Forces, a sword-swallower from Afganistan, the Chief Financial Adviser, the Chief Spy and his cat, Mrs. Taubsypuss.

---

GILLIGRASS'S KNOCK-KNOCK JOKES

The President to his Chief Spy:

'Knock-Knock', said the President.
'Who's there?', said the Chief Spy.
'Courtney.'
'Courtney who?'
'Courtney one yet?', said the President.

Gilligrass calls Premier of USSR, who is called Yugetoff (ha!)

'Knock-Knock', said the President.
'Who`s there?' said the Soviet Premier.
'Warren.'
'Warren who?'
'Warren Peace by Leo Tolstoi.' said the President.

Calling the Premier of China, How-Yu-Bin, the US administration dials the wrong number a couple of times:

'The country`s so full of Wings and Wongs, every time you wing you get the wong number.'

Finally, the President gets to talk to Assistant-Plemier (no typo!) of China, Chu-On-Dat

'Knock-Knock', said the President.
'Who der?'
'Ginger.'
'Ginger who?'
'Ginger yourself much when you fell off the Great Wall of China?' 

Reading List no. 5- Roald Dahl children's books

Children's stories

1.   The Gremlins 

2.   James and the Giant Peach 

3.    Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 

4.   The Magic Finger 

5.   Fantastic Mr Fox 

6.   Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator 

7.   Danny, the Champion of the World 

8.   The Enormous Crocodile 

9.   The Twits 

10. George's Marvellous Medicine 

11. The BFG 

12. The Witches 

13. The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me 

14. Matilda 

15. Esio Trot 

16. The Vicar of Nibbleswicke 

17. The Minpins 

Children's poetry

1.   Revolting Rhymes 

2.   Dirty Beasts 

3.   Rhyme Stew 

Don't care what they say...

...Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator is not a story for children. Not if they love their grandparents.
In the first book, the one with the Chocolate Factory, we find out that little Charlie lives with his very poor family in a little house that only has one bed, and this is shared by his four very old grandparents. They are called Grandpa Joe, who joined Charlie in the chocolate factory trip, Grandma Josephine, Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina. As you finish The Chocolate Factory and start reading through The Glass Elevator, you start getting the feeling that there is some sort of happy end on the way for this poor family who has been suffering for a very long time.
This, only if you manage to get over the very nasty feeling you get in The Chocolate Factory when Charlie spends Grandpa Joe's savings for an unlucky bar of chocolate and then the family starves for weeks.
So, Charlie inherits the chocolate factory and exotic Mr. Wonka wants to drag the whole family into the factory where they could live happily ever after. So far so good.
But the three grandparents that never get out of bed cause a lot of nasty problems because of their disbelief in Willie Wonka. The elevator gets thrown out into the orbit of the Earth and becomes a space shuttle and here Roald Dahl plays all-in on Hollywood effects: The President of USA is here, there are last minute escapes, aliens, conspiracy theories, political satire etc. (Will post some quotes for sure, they are just too good.)
The most disturbing part of the story happens back in the chocolate factory, though, where the grandparents are punished for their greed, just like children had been in the previous book. But there is something really sad and not right about old people going through hell, or maybe it's just me. I wasn't bothered at all when children where being inflated or shrunk in the first book. But here you have 80 year-olds who should enjoy the rest of their lives in peace now but they are almost killed. This is too much even for mean Willie Wonka when he simply refuses to watch the grandparents fighting over his miraculous medicine.
So, to avoid giving anymore spoilers, a few conclusions that have been haunting me all day:

• Read The Great Glass Elevator carefully and keep your eyes open for puns and subtle jokes as only Roald Dahl can make
• Read it for the dark humour and the satire and the absurdity of it all
• Read it when you're feeling ok and well-rested and you are ready to change the world 
• Read it if you need extra reasons to hate politicians

---

• Don't read it when you're missing your grandparents because it will disturb you in ways you cannot imagine
• Don't read it to very young children. It takes a lot of brain power and a strong emotional balance to go through this and survive it.

The Reader of Books...

... is the name of the first chapter of Matilda, a lovely book by Roald Dahl.

List of books Matilda had read before the age of 5:

• The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
• Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
• Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens
• Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
• Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
• Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
• Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Th. Hardy
• Gone to Earth - Mary Webb
• Kim - Rudyard Kipling
• The Invisible Man - H. G. Wells
• The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
• The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
• The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
• The Good Companions - J.B. Priestly
• Brighton Rock - Graham Greene
• Animal Farm - George Orwell

In BOLD, the books I read before the age of 25.

I have always imagined that this was a book about me, a little girl that reads and reads her life away. On the other hand, I didn't have the misfortune of having parents who didn't appreciate the value of reading, but rather encouraged me all the time. My father never told me to turn off the light at night and stop reading, even though my lamp has probably been bothering him all his life. Instead, he has invested a lot of effort and money into buying me the best reading lamps he could afford, so I wouldn't suffer at all.
By the time I was old enough to realize it, my father had gathered a huge collection of books that covered most of our living room while my mother had most probably read all of them.
Unfortunately, not a lot of this collection survived after a brief financial crysis, but long live the Kindle and the Internet! I have already filled all the shelves in my father's house with books I bought in the last few years, since I started having my own money and now I am just filling my Kindle with all sorts of treasures from the Wonderland of WWW.

---

It isn't always like that, though.
A couple of years ago, one of my students won a trophy in a school competition and after a few minutes of showing off, he asked me, gravely:
- And what am I supposed to do with this, Miss? Where do I put it?
-Well, display it at home, in your bookshelf. What else can you do with it?
- But, Miss, I don't have a bookshelf...
I thought maybe we were having a lost-in-translation moment, so I explained:
- In your bookshelf, where you keep your books in your house. Do you understand?
At which point, he just burst into laughter:
- Of course I know what a bookshelf is, but we don't have any. There are no books in my house!
And he found it natural not to have any books. And I was appalled by his news, while he just laughed at my confusion...

I wish...

... I could write report cards like these:

Illustration by Quentin Blake

A scorcher:

Your son, Maximilian, is a total wash-out. I hope you have a family business you can push him into when he leaves school because he sure as heck won't get a job anywhere else.

A lyrical approach:

It is a curious truth that grasshoppers have their hearing organs in the sides of the abdomen,. Your daughter Vanessa, judging by what she's learnt this term, has no hearing organs at all.

Natural history-inspired:

The periodical cicada spends six years as a grub underground, and no more than six days as a free creature of sunlight and air. Your son Wilfred has spent six years as a grub in this school and we are still waiting for him to emerge from the chrysalis.

About a poisonous little girl:

Fiona has the same glacial beauty as an iceberg, but unlike the iceberg she has absolutely nothing below the surface.

---

Source: Roald Dahl - Matilda (chapter 1)
Disclaimer:My students are actually nice little boys and girls who don't deserve these comments. (Well, most of them are.)

Just finished reading...

... Roald Dahl - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Everytime I think of Willy Wonka, I see this guy*

... and not Johnny Depp. Sorry, guys!









(*Gene Wilder, from the first musical film adaptation of the novel, made in 1971, which was called Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)