Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
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Book Reviews of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Book Review: Classic!
Summary: 4 Stars
This is truly one of Roald Dahl's best and is pretty much one of the best tributes to childhood he has written. Heck, it's about a whimsical candy shop and it's pure Dahlian. I still melt every time I hear about the mysterious factory and its master. I don't even mind the not-so-sublte morals (though the book does not have them as blatant as the Gene Wilder movie version). It's creative, understatedly intense while drumming up the quirkiness of the factory and the characters, and is wonderfully British. A true children's classic.Book Review: Fun To Read Aloud
Summary: 4 Stars
I recently read this book to my 3 year old and 2 year old. They really enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun to read aloud, since much of the book is dialogue. They have seen the newer movie many, many times, so much of the book was repetitive. They still seemed to enjoy it! The book was not much of a vocabulary builder, but certainly engaged their imaginations. I would recommend this book as a read aloud to very small children.Book Review: Later and uglier than expected.
Summary: 4 Stars
Book wasn't in great condition but it did say that it was in "good" not "excellent" condition. It came pretty late too, but it came within the time frame. Love this book by the way.Book Review: Fizzy Lifting Drink?
Summary: 3 Stars
My memories of Charlie are from the movies. I never read the book, but the movies do add things as movies will do and now I understand the differences arising between the two Chocolate Factory movies. The directors had to add some sort of conflict. Dahl's story is like this: Charlie is poor; Charlie gets golden ticket; Charlie is virtuous where the other children are bad; Charlie is awarded factory by Wonka.
In this, the original story, everything plays out nicely and everything is too simple. Charlie is poor but his family is entirely good. All the others we see are horrible and one-dimensional and their defining traits become the mode for their downfall. But if you're poor you can be good just by keeping your head down and good things will happen to you. I was dismayed to learn that Charlie and his grandpa avoided the Fizzy Lifting Drink and avoided any complexity to their characters as is in the version I cherished.
Wonka is an entirely wonderful and novel creation, and I understand why such talented actors wanted to fill his shoes. However, he is not a hero of the working class. Expelling all your workers as a way to avoid corporate espionage is bad enough, but enslaving a whole race of people as your personal worker-army is a little much. I would hope that the Salts or the Gloops or one of the other families enlighten the government as to the conditions at the factory. Also: Wonka has a beard.
In the end, reading the book for beloved stories like this always create more perspective. Dahl is a talented writer but this creation is written for a different audience than me. In that respects, I feel it is an effective text. For me however, it works in concert with the creative efforts spawned by it to forge a synthetic idea of just Who Willy Wonka and Charlie Bucket really are. I am glad I read it.
Book Review: From man that doesn't like children
Summary: 1 Stars
Dahl is a sadistic creep who was severely abused as a child. From reading his Dahl's biography "boy" it's easy to see where he, and so many other British authors, get their twisted ideas from; the harsh and cruel British Gulags aka boarding schools.
Roald Dahl loves to write stories about tormented, punished, starving, suffering children (and adults for that matter, too). I don't think British people like children, period. Just read David Copperfield or Oliver Twist by Dickens, any Harry Potter book, Alice in Wonderland among others. British children freeze and are chronically abused until they one day discover a "magical world" where it's warm, they get food and someone cares about them. Even many of Monty Python's movies hint at the same child-UNfriendly environment in the UK. I have asked all of my 4 children and several of their friends, ranging from age 5 through 15, and no one thinks that Dahl's book are any fun at all, and that is NOT from me telling them what to think or say, so don't go there.