Precociousness and Telekinesis: Matilda | Tor.com Precociousness and Telekinesis: Matilda Mari Ness Thu Feb 28, 2013 3:00pm 2 comments Matilda , published in 1988, is one of Roald Dahl’s longest and most intricate novels for children. The story of a highly precocious little girl who slowly develops powers of telekinesis, it focuses more on issues of destiny, education and employment than his usual subjects of wordplay, terror and disgusting things, though the book still has more than one incident that will delight kids who love disgusting things more than it will adults. Richer and more questioning than most of his other novels, it may not be entirely successful, but it offers kids, and possibly grown-ups, a lot to think about. Like many of Dahl’s protagonists, Matilda comes from a less-than-ideal home life. Although her parents are decently off, they mostly ignore Matilda, and to a lesser extent her brother. Even when they do notice their kids, they don’t understand them. Matilda’s father, a used car dealer, regularly cheats his customers and brags about it.

Matilda’s mother, a housewife, plays bingo every afternoon, leaving Matilda and her brother completely alone in the house, emotionally and mostly physically neglected. When the parents are home, they focus their attention almost entirely on television (for Dahl, who continued to rail against television until his death, a sure sign of villainy), consuming only unappetizing television dinners. Perhaps not surprisingly, Matilda, desperate to find something to read, finds her way to the local library, where she begins reading in earnest—not just children’s books, but the adult books Dahl read and felt that children should be exposed to early on. Especially Charles Dickens, here praised again for Great Expectations. This incidentally gives Dahl an opportunity to comment somewhat unkindly on fellow fantasy authors C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, critiquing their books for lacking humor. (I think he probably has a point about the Narnia series, but The Hobbit lacking humor? No, no, no. You mix that up with The Lord of the Rings, Mr. Dahl. But I digress.) The reading further solidifies Matilda’s personality as a very sweet, but quiet and intense little girl.

The books also raise her awareness of justice, so much so that she does not hesitate to point out that her father is cheating his customers. Her father, furious at getting this criticism from a five year old, yells at her. An equally infuriated Matilda decides to get back at him. It’s mostly revenge, but also, as Matilda thinks it through, justice, not only for his customers but also for the unfair way that he is treating her. Punishing him might correct his behavior. In fact her first few tricks do manage to chasten him, temporarily ending his bullying ways for short periods. It’s all preparation for the real meat of the novel: Matilda’s arrival at school and her confrontation with the horrible Headmistress Miss Trunchbull. Miss Trunchbull is every horrible nightmare of a teacher you can imagine in one huge, muscular and hammer throwing presence filled with hatred for children. I say hammer throwing because as it turns out, Miss Trunchbull previously competed in the Olympics in this event, and now uses small children to keep in shape, tossing them when she deems necessary, which is often.

Exactly why she chose to become a school administrator is an open question, especially given her belief that the very best schools are those without any kids in them, though I suspect every teacher has had this thought at least once. But we’ll get to that. Fortunately, Matilda also encounters a gifted and sympathetic teacher, Miss Honey, as well as several friends at the school, who warn her about Miss Trunchbull. This is not enough to save Matilda from Miss Trunchbull’s wrath, especially since Matilda’s father has sold Miss Trunchbull a lemon of a car. But that wrath has an unexpected result: it helps trigger Matilda’s latent telekinetic powers. Throw in a rather Gothic tale of a possible murder in a great old house and a terror of ghosts, and Matilda’s revenge is set. As a revenge fantasy, Matilda mostly works, with hilarious scenes and frequent hideously disgusting moments. (I’m not sure it would be a Dahl book without the disgusting bits.) Those who have been wrongfully accused of being stupid or ignorant or both will probably be cheering Matilda on as she strikes back at her seriously unappreciative father, and Miss Trunchbull is so thoroughly awful it’s rather fun to watch her get struck down.

And it’s always fun to see the weaknesses and bad deeds of villains turned against them. Though somehow, I find myself more satisfied with the scenes where Matilda’s schoolmates Bruce and Lavender manage, in their own way, to stand up to and take revenge against Miss Trunchbull, and even Matilda’s initial non-telekinetic acts of retaliation. After all, these are all things ordinary kids can do—well, it might be difficult for most kids to eat that much cake without getting sick, but still, it doesn’t require gaining magical powers. And watching these kids learn to use their own interior resources—Bruce’s ability to eat, Lavender’s desire to do something heroic and resulting bravery, and Matilda’s cleverness and innate sense of justice—has a certain satisfaction of its own. And it’s genuinely lovely to see, for once from Dahl, some supportive, non-nasty child characters who can be friends with the child protagonist. Lavender is pretty awesome: not as smart as Matilda and aware of her own physical limitations, but also certain she can do something.

And in Bruce Bogtrotter we have a first from Dahl: a fat kid who is not just heroic, but is successful and cheered on because he is fat. After several Dahl books where all fat kids were mere gluttons and fat people in general bad, this is a genuine pleasure. I also like that Matilda, almost alone in the Dahl books, accomplishes her main goals with very little assistance. Yes, Matilda does have a bit of magic to help her, and to an extent she has Miss Honey and her friend Lavender. But Lavender manages to get Matilda into more trouble, and Matilda ends up helping Miss Honey almost more than Miss Honey helps her. It helps, too, that Matilda has to earn her powers through practice. Matilda can at first only tip over glasses, and then, after a lot of practice, move one piece of chalk. Contrast George, who is able to produce magical medicine just by dumping various household and garage products into a pot on the stove and stirring a bit and chanting some sort of spell. Matilda has to work for her magic—and it makes it all the more satisfying when she succeeds. But for all this, Matilda has some rather obvious flaws.

For one, even for Dahl, this book meanders, and I do mean meanders. The plot line with Matilda’s parents is more or less lost in the second half of the book, only to reappear unexpectedly in the last couple of pages; the chapter with Lavender is a major digression, and although Dahl uses elements of that chapter to set up a later confrontation with Trunchbull and the onset of Matilda’s powers, it still has a feeling of a major detour. And Dahl’s revelation of the history between Miss Trunchbull and Miss Honey somehow makes their earlier encounter seem all wrong; reread that chapter in light of later revelations, and the “we’re just colleagues here” tone from both just doesn’t make much sense. Miss Trunchbull, certainly, should have made a negative reference or two (or more) to the past. A more serious flaw lies with Matilda herself, who just never manages to seem credible. It’s not the early reading, or the mathematics, or the general brilliance; Matilda is hardly the only child prodigy in fiction or in real life.

Even the non-prodigy me was reading Dickens only a little after Matilda did, although I certainly didn’t match Matilda’s progress with math. (I will, however, note that in direct contrast to Matilda’s parents, my parents actively encouraged me to read, and the main reason I learned to read well before kindergarten was that my mother couldn’t read to me fast enough. To have a child whose parent are that hostile to reading learn to read Dickens by four is a bit odd.) Or even the reaction of her parents to her brilliance; that, too, reads believably enough, not to mention offering a sort of comfort to children who may feel alienated from their parents. Or her ability to design revenge pranks on her parents and Miss Trunchbill. The pranks, with the arguable exception of the “ghost,” are all the sorts of things a kid of that age might think of and find funny, even if I have my doubts that Matilda’s parents would never think to blame their daughter for the pranks. They certainly don’t seem to hesitate to blame her for other things.

And if Matilda is an unrealistically nice child given her upbringing —well, Dahl specialized in nice protagonists, and it would be odd for him to change that now. No, the problem is combining all of that makes Matilda too flawless. She is not just highly intelligent and uncommonly wise for her age, but also has no problems making friends, tricking her parents, and (usually) staying quiet when necessary. When she gets angry, she usually stays in control, losing her temper only once after being accused of doing something she didn’t do—this after watching her fellow students tortured. Dahl had given us nearly flawless protagonists before, of course, but these children had also enjoyed at least a short time with loving parents, or lived in a situation not quite as emotionally horrible. And his previous children all dreamed of leaving their horrible situations. Matilda does not live in physical or financial poverty (although a diet of only television dinners is probably not that good for her), but her home life is still horrific. And yet she never dreams of leaving it, even with a diet of books showing other options.

(Although I suppose she figured that she was better off than Oliver Twist.) Dahl’s previous acknowledgement that emotional poverty can be as distressing and damaging as other forms seems mostly lost here. I say “mostly” because it does show in one way: As Miss Honey notes, Matilda is more an adult in a child’s body than a child, which perhaps helps explain why it’s hard to believe in her. Dahl had previously been successful in creating adult characters who were essentially children in adult bodies, but when it came to the opposite, he couldn’t quite do it. And then we have the book’s uneasy treatment of women. On the one hand, Dahl gives us passages like this: “I said you chose books and I chose looks,” Mrs Wormwood said. “And who’s finished up the better off? Me, of course. I’m sitting pretty in a nice house with a successful businessman and you’re left slaving away teaching a lot of nasty little children the ABC.” The book-loving, television hating Dahl certainly does not endorse Mrs Wormwood’s point of view, even undercutting it with his observations that a) Mrs Wormwood is not all that good looking, and b) Mr Wormwood is successful only because he is dishonest.

He also provides two examples of admirable women with jobs in Miss Honey and the librarian Mrs Phelps. And, of course, by the end of the book [spoiler] quite the opposite is true: Miss Honey has the lovely house, and Mrs Wormwood is on the run. But at the same time, other parts of this book hint that Mrs Wormwood is not entirely wrong, and show a distrust of women in power. After all, the two admirable women professionals are not in management positions, and even there, seem to have limited power. Mrs Phelps disappears after the beginning of the book, and although she is worried that Matilda might get hit by a car, does nothing to prevent this, since her previous efforts to help children went badly. Miss Honey cannot prevent Miss Trunchbull from entering her classroom and physically abusing her students. And although Miss Honey may love being a teacher, she has ended up in her position because she had no other choice. She was not allowed to go to university, but instead ended up at the local teacher’s college, something Miss Honey herself describes as a lesser option. Her options were limited partly because of the lack of money, but mostly because another woman kept her from pursuing her options.

Indeed, the theme of women in positions of power putting down other women (or small girls) undercuts the book: Mrs Wormwood is the exact opposite of a supportive parent, discouraging Matilda from pursuing her intellectual gifts (not that she’s successful), belittling her, and providing her with a grand total of one useful piece of advice in the entire book (“I’m afraid men are not always quite as clever as they think they are.”) Miss Trunchbull terrorizes girls and boys, but that continues the theme of women putting down women, and her strong and loudly stated belief that all children are horrible pests on human society is not exactly the sort of statement inclined to increase self-esteem. And speaking of Miss Trunchbull, I have to assume that her options, too, were greatly limited—otherwise why is she working at a job she so clearly hates? She has inherited some money and a house, after all, and has had a successful athletic career, and yet still finds herself in a job where she is surrounded by disgusting creatures (from her point of view) that she despises. She undoubtedly gets some joy out of flinging them out of windows or locking them into cages, but enough to make up for the misery?

Doubtful. What we are left with is a situation where one woman with some authority (Mrs Phelps the librarian) has decided that it is best if she never interferes in anything, a second woman (Mrs Wormwood), arguing that women are better off focusing solely on looks and not education, a third woman (Miss Honey) living in dire poverty even with a job, surviving only because a farmer is offering her a reduced rent, and the only woman in a leadership role (Miss Trunchbull) abusing her power and torturing those under her control. A man takes over the school in Miss Trunchbull’s place. Under his control, the school does well. It’s particularly striking given Dahl’s complete and obvious disapproval of the one woman who does stay at home, and the restrictions that face the adult women characters. And yet to counter all of this, Dahl also shows Matilda and Lavender choosing their own destinies and shaping themselves into who they want to be. But then, yikes.

At the end of the book—MAJOR SPOILER—Matilda loses the telekinesis powers she suffered so much for and practiced so hard to gain, not because, as I thought, the removal of the major physical threat against her, but because, as Miss Honey notes, Matilda is now using her brain in other ways—intellectual ways. It’s not just that this seems unfair—as I noted, the powers may have arisen spontaneously, but Matilda worked to strengthen and control them—or that I can’t help thinking that intellectual stimulation should increase Matilda’s overall brain power and thus her telekinetic powers, but because this sets up an uneasy situation: she can either have something to think about, or power, not both. Unfairness, of course, is a major theme of all Dahl books, but I couldn’t help regretting it here. (I’ll be discussing the movie later, but I’ll just note here that its screenwriters and producers appear to have agreed with me.) I suppose it’s just as well to learn that even child prodigies can’t have everything.

And if I find myself wondering what will happen to Matilda’s brother—who never seemed like a terrible sort, and who gives Matilda a long look as he is driven away—it’s probably just as well that, like real life, not everything in this book gets a neat, tidied up ending. And as I noted, Matilda has a lot of other things to enjoy, and works particularly well as a wish fulfillment for nine year old girls. It’s certainly a book that might get a child thinking—and I can never think that’s a bad thing. Despite practice, Mari Ness has never been able to lift a single piece of chalk with her mind. Perhaps she thinks too much. She lives in central Florida. Matilda by Roald Dahl | Books on Tape Add To List Categories: (Tags powered by Library Thing ) “Roald Dahl sometimes shared a tonal kinship with Ogden Nash, and he could demonstrate a verbal inventiveness nearly Seussian…[His] stories work better in audio than in print.” –The New York Times “The Trunchbull” is no match for Matilda! Matilda is a sweet, exceptional young girl, but her parents think she's just a nuisance.

She expects school to be different but there she has to face Miss Trunchbull, a kid-hating terror of a headmistress. When Matilda is attacked by the Trunchbull she suddenly discovers she has a remarkable power with which to fight back. It'll take a superhuman genius to give Miss Trunchbull what she deserves and Matilda may be just the one to do it! AWARDS Free Reading ♠∻⇄ Matilda by Roald Dahl ⋮ Books Online Matilda Mariel Nov 06, 2010 "You chose books and I chose looks." Matilda's mom kills me. I chose looks. I like to look smart too, though. In high school my bro's friends would pick on me for owning so many books. I pretended to be dumb like Matilda and said I hadn't read any of the books and they were trophies to make me look ...

Grace Tjan Jan 05, 2011 5 stars from my little girl, Jess (age 7).SPOILERS!Comments while reading:"Matilda's parents are sooo stupid!""What is a 'used car salesman'?""How does putting sawdust and oil in a car's gearbox make it run smoother?""The funniest parts are when Miss Trunchbull hurled the kids out of the classroom, ... Shayantani Das Mar 22, 2012 Matilda is basically a child prodigy; she is 4 years old and a voracious reader. That is amazing, I know! But, Matilda is not the only character. There are the tyrannical parents who do not encourage reading, do not have a shred of love or sympathy for Matilda and basically hate Matilda for some unk... Jason Koivu Sep 02, 2015 This might be one of the most perfect books for readers. It's about a reader who just wants to get her read on and bad people are trying to stop her. Instant character attachment!

Fully involved in the "tumultuous" plot!"Let my reader goooo...." sing the readers!What a wonderful tale! Little Matilda... Darth J Nov 04, 2014 While I personally love a book about a child prodigy (especially in the area of telekinesis), I had a different reaction to this book while rereading it as an adult. As a kid I thought Matilda was awesome, she was intelligent and independent. As an adult I see this as a book about gross neglect and ... Stephanie Dec 13, 2015 WOW, I loved Matilda ! This was my first time reading the story that makes so many list of "must read" that I wanted to understand what all of the fuss was about. Well now I do!!!Roald Dahl weaves a compelling and creative tale that keeps the reader interested from start to finish! This book is cha... Mario May 23, 2015 All the reading she had done had given her a view of life that they had never seen.This book was so heartwarming. And it just proved that Dahl was (and always will be) one of the best storytellers ever.

The way he writes and how he draws you into the story will always amaze me. This is my second boo... Hannah Greendale Sep 16, 2016 Matilda is a lovable protagonist, revered for her mischievous nature and easily sympathized with because of her abusive parents who don't recognize how extraordinary she is. Admittedly, she's a vengeful girl, but that never subtracts from her likability. Roald Dahl crafted unapologetically over-the-... Raeleen Lemay Nov 11, 2015 This book was so great! I do enjoy the movie a bit more, but nevertheless this will always be a favorite of mine. I also really want to re-read some more Roald Dahl books now! ... Joana Cotidiana Mar 28, 2016 O filme fez parte da minha infância e só depois percebi que era baseado neste livro! Para quem não sabe é sobre uma menina muito inteligente que aprende a ler sozinha. Os pais não apoiam este seu amor por livros, preferem muito mais a televisão. O pior é que acabam mesmo por neg...

Readers Also Enjoyed About Roald Dahl Roald Dahl - Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer and screenwriter of Norwegian descent, who rose to prominence in the 1940's with works for both children and adults, and became one of the world's bestselling authors.Dahl's first published work, inspired by a meeting with C. S. Forester, was Shot Down Over Libya. Today the story is published as A Piece of Cake. The story, about his wartime adv Browse by Genre Matilda - Roald Dahl Roald Dahl Published in 1988 Synopsis Roald Dahl's Matilda won the Children's Book Award shortly after it was published in 1988, and it has continued to delight audiences ever since. Background Background Matilda Wormwood is only five years old, but she is a genius. Unfortunately her parents are too stupid to even notice. Worse, her horrible headmistress Miss Trunchbull is a bully who makes life difficult for Matilda's teacher, Miss Honey, and her friends. But what Miss Trunchbull doesn't know is that Matilda has a trick or two up her sleeve...

Matilda won the Children's Book Award shortly after it was published in 1988, and it has continued to delight audiences ever since. Early drafts of the story were very different to the one we now know. At first, Matilda was a wicked girl who eventually used her powers to help her teacher solve her financial problems - by fixing a horse race. In the end, though, it became the magical story now known to children the world over. In 1996 a film version of Matilda was released. Directed by Danny DeVito - who also starred as Mr Wormwood, alongside Mara Wilson as Matilda and Pam Ferris as Miss Trunchbull - the film went on to become a cult classic. In 2010, The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Matilda The Musical, written by Dennis Kelly and with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin, opened in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK, to great critical acclaim. The production transferred to London's West End a year later, and in spring 2013 the show opened on Broadway. Matilda was Roald Dahl's last long children's book.

Find out more about the period in Roald Dahl's life during Matilda was published Review of Matilda by Roald Dahl : SFFaudio Review of Matilda by Roald Dahl October 25, 2013 Publication Date: 3 July 2013 ISBN: 9781611761849 Themes: / fantasy / telekinesis / children / school / libraries / bullies / Publisher summary: Matilda is a sweet, exceptional young girl, but her parents think she’s just a nuisance. She expects school to be different but there she has to face Miss Trunchbull, a kid-hating terror of a headmistress. When Matilda is attacked by the Trunchbull she suddenly discovers she has a remarkable power with which to fight back. It’ll take a superhuman genius to give Miss Trunchbull what she deserves and Matilda may be just the one to do it! This book made me so nostalgic for childhood, mostly because Roald Dahl is a wizard who can see through a child’s eyes but also because he was such a huge influence on me when I was a kid.

Matilda was one of my favorite Roald Dahl stories, and hearing it narrated by Kate Winslet was amazing—probably the best narration I’ve heard. She colors every single character a fully realized personality, from syrupy sweet to hilariously grotesque. I think Kate Winslet is doing in narration what Quentin Blake did for Roald Dahl in illustration. The story is Roald Dahl at his best: it is sarcastic and dark (featuring a bingo-obsessed mother, a dishonest father, and a headmistress who throws children out windows for eating in class) but it’s also hilarious, magical, and hopeful. Matilda Wormwood is a very small, sensitive, and brilliant girl who has the misfortune of being born to gormless idiots. Mr. Wormwood is a rat-faced used-car salesman who’s really only interested in people who boost his ego. He seems allergic to his daughter, mainly because she is much cleverer than him. Mrs. Wormwood, when she’s not off playing bingo, sits around watching American soaps and thinks “Looks is more important than books!” Matilda’s good morals and quick wits unsettle her parents, which makes them even more dismissive and neglectful of her.

Her only escape is to visit the local library where she devours the whole children’s section in no time. The amazed librarian than helps guide the little girls through all the classics, from Charles Dickens and Jane Austen to George Orwell and HG Wells. “The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.” Reading all this literature awakens something in Matilda. She realizes that she now has a view on life that her parents have not experienced and never will, and that there’s far more to life than cheating people and watching television. But she’s only four, so she’s stuck with them, “no matter how asinine.” To stop herself from going crazy, she beings to play mischievous pranks on them to punish them for every wrong they do. And when she starts school and meets even nastier bullies, she must use her brain power to develop new techniques for helping good people and punishing rotten ones. I love the honesty Roald Dahl puts into his children’s stories.

Children are often taught they must respect and obey their parents and teachers no matter what, as if we live in some utopia where all adults are intelligent, caring protectors. But Roald Dahl is not afraid to tell children the truth: sometimes monsters are real, and sometimes they look just like the people who have the most power over you or are supposed to care about you. People should earn trust and respect through their actions, not get it automatically because of their authority, age, or status. Roald Dahl also teaches the other great wisdom: the world is full of idiots and oversized egos, and the best way to survive them is to keep your wits sharp and find the humor in every situation. Matilda by Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake |, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® A New Home The Reader of Books It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful. Some parents go further. They become so blinded by adoration they manage to convince themselves their child has qualities of genius. Well, there is nothing very wrong with all this. It’s the way of the world.

It is only when the parents begin telling us about the brilliance of their own revolting offspring, that we start shouting, “Bring us a basin! We’re going to be sick!” School teachers suffer a good deal from having to listen to this sort of twaddle from proud parents, but they usually get their own back when the time comes to write the end-of-term reports. If I were a teacher I would cook up some real scorchers for the children of doting parents. “Your son Maximilian”, I would write, “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.” Or if I were feeling lyrical that day, I might write, “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.” I might even delve deeper into natural history and say, “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.” A particularly poisonous little girl might sting me into saying, “Fiona has the same glacial beauty as an iceberg, but unlike the iceberg she has absolutely nothing below the surface.” I think I might enjoy writing end-of-term reports for the stinkers in my class. But enough of that. We have to get on. Occasionally one comes across parents who take the opposite line, who show no interest at all in their children, and these of course are far worse than the doting ones. Mr and Mrs Wormwood were two such parents. They had a son called Michael and a daughter called Matilda, and the parents looked upon Matilda in particular as nothing more than a scab. A scab is something you have to put up with until the time comes when you can pick it off and flick it away. Mr and Mrs Wormwood looked forward enormously to the time when they could pick their little daughter off and flick her away, preferably into the next county or even further than that.

It is bad enough when parents treat ordinary children as though they were scabs and bunions, but it becomes somehow a lot worse when the child in question is extraordinary, and by that I mean sensitive and brilliant. Matilda was both of these things, but above all she was brilliant. Her mind was so nimble and she was so quick to learn that her ability should have been obvious even to the most half-witted of parents. But Mr and Mrs Wormwood were both so gormless and so wrapped up in their own silly little lives that they failed to notice anything unusual about their daughter. To tell the truth, I doubt they would have noticed had she crawled into the house with a broken leg. Matilda’s brother Michael was a perfectly normal boy, but the sister, as I said, was something to make your eyes pop. By the age of one and a half her speech was perfect and she knew as many words as most grown-ups. The parents, instead of applauding her, called her a noisy chatterbox and told her sharply that small girls should be seen and not heard. By the time she was three, Matilda had taught herself to read by studying newspapers and magazines that lay around the house.

At the age of four, she could read fast and well and she naturally began hankering after books. The only book in the whole of this enlightened household was something called Easy Cooking belonging to her mother, and when she had read this from cover to cover and had learnt all the recipes by heart, she decided she wanted something more interesting. “Daddy,” she said, “do you think you could buy me a book?” “A book?” he said. “What d’you want a flaming book for?” “To read, Daddy.” “What’s wrong with the telly, for heaven’s sake? We’ve got a lovely telly with a twelve-inch screen and now you come asking for a book! You’re getting spoiled, my girl!” Nearly every weekday afternoon Matilda was left alone in the house. Her brother (five years older than her) went to school. Her father went to work and her mother went out playing bingo in a town eight miles away. Mrs Wormwood was hooked on bingo and played it five afternoons a week. On the afternoon of the day when her father had refused to buy her a book, Matilda set out all by herself to walk to the public library in the village.

When she arrived, she introduced herself to the librarian, Mrs Phelps. She asked if she might sit awhile and read a book. Mrs Phelps, slightly taken aback at the arrival of such a tiny girl unaccompanied by a parent, nevertheless told her she was very welcome. “Where are the children’s books please?” Matilda asked. “They’re over there on those lower shelves,” Mrs Phelps told her. “Would you like me to help you find a nice one with lots of pictures in it?” “No, thank you,” Matilda said. “I’m sure I can manage.” From then on, every afternoon, as soon as her mother had left for bingo, Matilda would toddle down to the library. The walk took only ten minutes and this allowed her two glorious hours sitting quietly by herself in a cosy corner devouring one book after another. When she had read every single children’s book in the place, she started wandering round in search of something else. Mrs Phelps, who had been watching her with fascination for the past few weeks, now got up from her desk and went over to her. “Can I help you, Matilda?” she asked. “I’m wondering what to read next,” Matilda said.

“I’ve finished all the children’s books.” “You mean you’ve looked at the pictures?” “Yes, but I’ve read the books as well.” Mrs Phelps looked down at Matilda from her great height and Matilda looked right back up at her. “I thought some were very poor,” Matilda said, “but others were lovely. I liked The Secret Garden best of all. It was full of mystery. The mystery of the room behind the closed door and the mystery of the garden behind the big wall.” Mrs Phelps was stunned. “Exactly how old are you, Matilda?” she asked. “Four years and three months,” Matilda said. Mrs Phelps was more stunned than ever, but she had the sense not to show it. “What sort of a book would you like to read next?” she asked. Matilda said, “I would like a really good one that grown-ups read. A famous one. I don’t know any names.” Mrs Phelps looked along the shelves, taking her time. She didn’t quite know what to bring out. How, she asked herself, does one choose a famous grown-up book for a four-year-old girl?

Her first thought was to pick a young teenager’s romance of the kind that is written for fifteen-year-old schoolgirls, but for some reason she found herself instinctively walking past that particular shelf. “Try this,” she said at last. “It’s very famous and very good. If it’s too long for you, just let me know and I’ll find something shorter and a bit easier.” “Great Expectations,” Matilda read, “by Charles Dickens. I’d love to try it.” I must be mad, Mrs Phelps told herself, but to Matilda she said, “Of course you may try it.” Over the next few afternoons Mrs Phelps could hardly take her eyes from the small girl sitting for hour after hour in the big armchair at the far end of the room with the book on her lap. It was necessary to rest it on the lap because it was too heavy for her to hold up, which meant she had to sit leaning forward in order to read.

And a strange sight it was, this tiny dark-haired person sitting there with her feet nowhere near touching the floor, totally absorbed in the wonderful adventures of Pip and old Miss Havisham and her cobwebbed house and by the spell of magic that Dickens the great story-teller had woven with his words. The only movement from the reader was the lifting of the hand every now and then to turn over a page, and Mrs Phelps always felt sad when the time came for her to cross the floor and say, “It’s ten to five, Matilda.” During the first week of Matilda’s visits Mrs Phelps had said to her, “Does your mother walk you down here every day and then take you home?” “My mother goes to Aylesbury every afternoon to play bingo,” Matilda had said. “She doesn’t know I come here.” “But that’s surely not right,” Mrs Phelps said. “I think you’d better ask her.” “I’d rather not,” Matilda said. “She doesn’t encourage reading books.

Nor does my father.” “But what do they expect you to do every afternoon in an empty house?” “Just mooch around and watch the telly.” “I see.” “She doesn’t really care what I do,” Matilda said a little sadly. Mrs Phelps was concerned about the child’s safety on the walk through the fairly busy village High Street and the crossing of the road, but she decided not to interfere. Within a week, Matilda had finished Great Expectations which in that edition contained four hundred and eleven pages. “I loved it,” she said to Mrs Phelps. “Has Mr Dickens written any others?” “A great number,” said the astounded Mrs Phelps. “Shall I choose you another?” Over the next six months, under Mrs Phelps’s watchful and compassionate eye, Matilda read the following books: Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy Gone to Earth by Mary Webb Kim by Rudyard Kipling The Invisible Man by H. G.

Wells The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck The Good Companions by J. B. Priestley Brighton Rock by Graham Greene Animal Farm by George Orwell It was a formidable list and by now Mrs Phelps was filled with wonder and excitement, but it was probably a good thing that she did not allow herself to be completely carried away by it all. Almost anyone else witnessing the achievements of this small child would have been tempted to make a great fuss and shout the news all over the village and beyond, but not so Mrs Phelps. She was someone who minded her own business and had long since discovered it was seldom worth while to interfere with other people’s children. “Mr Hemingway says a lot of things I don’t understand,” Matilda said to her. “Especially about men and women. But I loved it all the same. The way he tells it I feel I am right there on the spot watching it all happen.” “A fine writer will always make you feel that,” Mrs Phelps said. “And don’t worry about the bits you can’t understand.

Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.” “I will, I will.” “Did you know”, Mrs Phelps said, “that public libraries like this allow you to borrow books and take them home?” “I didn’t know that,” Matilda said. “Could I do it?” “Of course,” Mrs Phelps said. “When you have chosen the book you want, bring it to me so I can make a note of it and it’s yours for two weeks. You can take more than one if you wish.” From then on, Matilda would visit the library only once a week in order to take out new books and return the old ones. Her own small bedroom now became her reading-room and there she would sit and read most afternoons, often with a mug of hot chocolate beside her. She was not quite tall enough to reach things around the kitchen, but she kept a small box in the outhouse which she brought in and stood on in order to get whatever she wanted. Mostly it was hot chocolate she made, warming the milk in a saucepan on the stove before mixing it. Occasionally she made Bovril or Ovaltine.

It was pleasant to take a hot drink up to her room and have it beside her as she sat in her silent room reading in the empty house in the afternoons. The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village. Mr Wormwood, the Great Car Dealer Matilda’s parents owned quite a nice house with three bedrooms upstairs, while on the ground floor there was a dining-room and a living-room and a kitchen. Her father was a dealer in second-hand cars and it seemed he did pretty well at it. “Sawdust”, he would say proudly, “is one of the great secrets of my success. And it costs me nothing. I get it free from the sawmill.” “What do you use it for?” Matilda asked him. “Ha!” the father said.

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” “I don’t see how sawdust can help you to sell second-hand cars, daddy.” “That’s because you’re an ignorant little twit,” the father said. His speech was never very delicate but Matilda was used to it. She also knew that he liked to boast and she would egg him on shamelessly. “You must be very clever to find a use for something that costs nothing,” she said. “I wish I could do it.” “You couldn’t,” the father said. “You’re too stupid. But I don’t mind telling young Mike here about it seeing he’ll be joining me in the business one day.” Ignoring Matilda, he turned to his son and said, “I’m always glad to buy a car when some fool has been crashing the gears so badly they’re all worn out and rattle like mad. I get it cheap. Then all I do is mix a lot of sawdust with the oil in the gear-box and it runs as sweet as a nut.” “How long will it run like that before it starts rattling again?” Matilda asked him. “Long enough for the buyer to get a good distance away,” the father said, grinning.

“About a hundred miles.” “But that’s dishonest, daddy,” Matilda said. “It’s cheating.” “No one ever got rich being honest,” the father said. “Customers are there to be diddled.” Mr Wormwood was a small ratty-looking man whose front teeth stuck out underneath a thin ratty moustache. He liked to wear jackets with large brightly-coloured checks and he sported ties that were usually yellow or pale green. “Now take mileage for instance,” he went on. “Anyone who’s buying a second-hand car, the first thing he wants to know is how many miles it’s done. Right?” “Right,” the son said. “So I buy an old dump that’s got about a hundred and fifty thousand miles on the clock. I get it cheap. But no one’s going to buy it with a mileage like that, are they? And these days you can’t just take the speedometer out and fiddle the numbers back like you used to ten years ago. They’ve fixed it so it’s impossible to tamper with it unless you’re a ruddy watchmaker or something. So what do I do?

I use my brains, laddie, that’s what I do.” “How?” young Michael asked, fascinated. He seemed to have inherited his father’s love of crookery. “I sit down and say to myself, how can I convert a mileage reading of one hundred and fifty thousand into only ten thousand without taking the speedometer to pieces? Well, if I were to run the car backwards for long enough then obviously that would do it. The numbers would click backwards, wouldn’t they? But who’s going to drive a flaming car in reverse for thousands and thousands of miles? You couldn’t do it!” “Of course you couldn’t,” young Michael said. “So I scratch my head,” the father said. “I use my brains. When you’ve been given a fine brain like I have, you’ve got to use it. And all of a sudden, the answer hits me. I tell you, I felt exactly like that other brilliant fellow must have felt when he discovered penicillin. ‘Eureka!’ I cried. ‘I’ve got it!’” “What did you do, dad?” the son asked him. “The speedometer”, Mr Wormwood said, “is run off a cable that is coupled up to one of the front wheels.

So first I disconnect the cable where it joins the front wheel. Next, I get one of those high-speed electric drills and I couple that up to the end of the cable in such a way that when the drill turns, it turns the cable backwards. You got me so far? You following me?” “Yes, daddy,” young Michael said. The Wondercrump World of Roald Dahl | 10th Feb – 3rd July 2016 For ages 7-12 I grew up in the village-next-door to Great Missenden, the place Roald called home for 36 years. The village was a Dahl-lover’s dream, filled with bits of his books – the petrol pumps from Danny the Champion of the World just casually sitting on the high street, the tree from Fantastic Mr Fox perfectly visible on the hill, the library from Matilda that I could actually visit, regularly. Once a year, ‘Gipsy House’ – the Dahl home – would open to the public: the gardens filled with children who sat under trees listening to his stories, explored his extensive grounds, and peeked inside his writing hut.

His imagination was genuinely part of my childhood landscape, and I was as immersed in his universe as I thought it was possible to be: until today, when I stepped into The Wondercrump World of Roald Dahl. Image by Victor Frankowski “We’ve just tried to capture a feeling,” says Laura Dockrill, who wrote the narration that accompanies the experience in a stylistic voice as close to Dahl’s as we are likely to get. Hers is the best description of this interactive, multi-sensory Roald Dahl journey, which lets you “soak in a bath of his brain bubbles” – not a bad way to celebrate the great storyteller’s centenary year. In fact, The Wondercrump World, is literally about feeling, about touching and exploring, listening, even smelling – there’s no exhibition text or graphic, just room upon room of Dahl’s stories presented in such a way that you can live inside them. Dahl’s wartime plane crash in Libya? Stand on desert sands alongside the wreckage. The Buckinghamshire woods he walked through each day? Clamber over a stile and wander through them.

Studded throughout it all are archival gems from The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre, from pieces of handwritten manuscript on Roald’s favourite ruled yellow paper, to his size 13 sandal, sent to Quentin Blake as an example of the Big Friendly Giant’s fashion. Image by Victor Frankowski Grown-ups remain another species – one prone to frequent “whizz bangs” – though Dahl’s gleeful disdain for adults is muted just enough to allow one to guide our tour. This grown-up tells us that Dahl liked each of his books to have a moral – a fact so surprising as to reveal new shades of the author’s genius. The takeaway message from The Wondercrump World is that “it’s very possible to make something good out of something bad”, a lesson embodied in the terrible school report of a boy who went on to do wonderful things. From Dahl’s biography, we see his characters and stories grow; glimpsing the roots makes his imagination seem unending but sort of natural, in a most encouraging way.

The Wondercrump World of Roald Dahl is for everyone who has ever wanted to whisper their dreams into a bottle for the BFG, or try out telekinesis like Matilda, or feel the gooey insides of a giant peach. But it’s also for everyone else – you don’t need to have read a word of Dahl to be swept up in the phizz-whizzing, gloriumptious fun of it all. Follow Children’s Theatre Reviews @ctheatrereviews Share this: Roald Dahl and the Curious Shunt | Proto Magazine Published On Dec 10, 2015 Technology Roald Dahl and the Curious Shunt The beloved author’s first great gift to children was medical, not literary. by Sarah Watts // Illustration by In 1960, Roald Dahl had not yet become a household name. He had not yet written about a girl named Matilda who had powers of telekinesis, nor James and his giant peach, nor Willy Wonka and his extraordinary chocolate factory.

Dahl was instead a writer of adult stories known for their macabre twists, such as a tale of a woman who killed her husband with a frozen leg of mutton, and got rid of the evidence by serving it to the investigating officers. But something changed that year. Dahl’s third child, Theo, was born. And on a walk home with the family nanny in November, Theo, then four months old, was struck by a New York City taxicab and thrown from his baby carriage, shattering his skull. Theo was rushed to New Lenox hospital. The infant had suffered multiple skull fractures and brain injury, which resulted in secondary hydrocephalus, a build-up of cerebral-spinal fluid on the brain. The hydrocephalus was treated with a Holter shunt, a device implanted in the cerebellum which rerouted the excess fluid. Shortly after the shunt placement, Theo's hydrocephalus stabilized. By January, the baby no longer smiled, and his eyes looked "bewildered." Panicked, Roald rushed his son to a nearby hospital where doctors discovered that Theo's shunt had clogged, causing the spinal fluid to back up and put pressure on his brain. The hydrocephalus had temporarily blinded him.

Over the next nine months, Theo's shunt would malfunction six more times, each time leaving him temporarily blind and at risk for permanent brain damage. Dahl took the unorthodox step of talking with a fellow enthusiast of model airplanes. Stanley Wade was a hydraulic engineer, but was known to Dahl for his miniature engines, and the clever hydraulic pumps he crafted to keep the fuel lines from clogging. Dahl told Wade about his son’s problem, and talked him into designing a new shunt, using his hydraulic pumps as a model. The two got Theo's neurosurgeon, Kenneth Till, to supervise their efforts. The new Wade-Dahl-Till valve was ingenious. The old valve, the one in the malfunctioning Holder shunt, had a silicone covering on either end with a small slit in the middle, like the nipple on the end of a baby bottle, and the cerebral-spinal fluid was supposed to drain through it. Unfortunately, debris and reflux—common in patients who suffer from brain bleeds—could clog the tiny slits. The new valve replaced the silicon with two movable metal discs.

When fluid accumulated on the brain and flowed through the valve, pressure from the top would move the metal discs to an “open” position, allowing the fluid to drain through the bottom. But when the spinal fluid threatened to flow back through the valve, pressure from the bottom pushed the discs closed. If necessary, the cerebral spinal fluid could even be pumped through the valve by applying manual pressure through the patient's scalp. By 1962, Theo's hydrocephalus had stabilized. But Dahl continued to put final touches on the Wade-Dahl-Till valve, and it moved into production early that same year. By midyear, the valve was transplanted into its first live patient, and the procedure was a resounding success. For the next several years, until medical technology progressed beyond it, the Wade-Dahl-Till valve helped an estimated 3,000 patients recover from secondary hydrocephalus. Young Theo survived the episode with minimal problems, and grew to be a healthy adult. Roald Dahl didn’t pursue any other medical innovations, but did make one career shift. After his son’s harrowing episode, he began to write for children — a move that spread his clever touch to a much wider audience. Dispatches

Question: What Roald Dahl story was about a genius girl with telekinesis?
Answer: Matilda