Roald Dahl

“I don’t know what made Charlie so much more special or enduring than many of his others. It’s one of his first books. It came just after James and Giant Peach, so he was a new, upcoming but very prominent author, so his novelty factor was at its peak. So, I guess it’s one that people really jumped on, but the story is so inventive. His character names are amazing—Augustus Gloop, Violet Beauregarde, even Willy Wonka—they all have these fabulous, incredible, ridiculous names that are great to say and very funny. And again, you’ve got this darkness, where the nasty children just disappear. They fall away in various different ways or shapes or forms and you’re rooting for poor little Charlie Bucket. “ Read more...

The Best Roald Dahl Books

Tilly Burn, Children's Author

“It is a book I find I can reread. It’s not just a book about Matilda, this wonderful heroine, it is also what Roald Dahl says about reading and imagination and books being like ships, books being like lights. In another writer’s hands these ideas could seem sentimental but with Roald Dahl, who is never sentimental and who is always on that edge of danger and always has his characters on those edges of danger, there is never any sense of sentiment.” Read more...

Fierce Girls in Tween Fiction

Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Children's Author

“It’s glorious. It’s softer and gentler than the other Roald Dahl books. Victor Hazell…comes in to this community and he doesn’t understand how things are done and he tries to bring in abrupt changes, mostly to line his own pockets. Danny and his dad aren’t going to let him get away with this – and they do so in increasingly imaginative and hilarious ways. I knew people who were like the characters in this book. I recognised them. It was such a good story. It felt like my world and it connected with me as a little kid because I grew up in a forest and it’s all about the woods and going into the woods—these things were just completely familiar to me. Danny seemed plausible to me…Honestly, I have never quite trusted people who say, ‘My favourite Roald Dahl is Matilda.’ I tend to think, ‘you just don’t understand, you have to read Danny Champion of the World!‘ It’s one of those books that I’ll read and reread.” Read more...

The best books on Outsiders

Sarah Franklin,

“It’s about the enterprising and wonderful Mr Fox whose family are starving in their burrow. He’s fed up of not having enough food to feed them. Mrs Fox asks him to go out and get some food and he comes up with a phenomenal plan to dig tunnels underneath three farmers, Mr Boggis, Mr Bunce, and Mr Bean and steal chickens and ham, cider and lots of other goodies from them all” Read more...

The Best Roald Dahl Books

Tilly Burn, Children's Author

“The title The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me is from the perspective of the monkey—the ‘me’ isn’t the little boy, but the monkey. And together they start this window washing business. The Pelican has this amazing ability to retract his bill, so it turns into a big bucket, and the giraffe can extend her neck so she can reach the higher-up windows and the monkey can clamber up the neck of the giraffe to clean the windows. They clean the Duke of Hampshire’s Hall, clean all his windows and along the way manage to foil a burglary. Then the Duke of Hampshire is so pleased that he gives Billy money to turn the dilapidated old Grubber into the sweet shop of Billy’s dreams.” Read more...

The Best Roald Dahl Books

Tilly Burn, Children's Author

“I think it is one of his darkest books and a very sad book. It’s very gruesome, very macabre. It was Dahl’s first ever children’s book, written in 1961, fresh off the back of writing his short stories. One of his editors suggested to him that now he’d got the short story form down, maybe he could write books for children—because they’re short and because Dahl was very good at getting from A to B in an imaginative, wonderful way. It’s definitely darker and less measured than lots of his later children’s books, which are a bit nicer and a bit happier. I reread James and the Giant Peach recently. Right at the beginning it’s so sad that in James’s house, where he lives with Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, he can literally look out and see his old house, where he used to live with his parents. You find that out on the second page, and it’s just such a heartbreaking little detail that Roald puts in. So James is darker, but it’s equally fantastical, funny, comical and brilliant. It’s got all the good stuff. I think it’s really emblematic of Roald Dahl’s writing.” Read more...

The Best Roald Dahl Books

Tilly Burn, Children's Author

“I remember reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and loving it, obviously—it was about sweets and magic adventures, two of my favourite things. But I always feel that the Great Glass Elevator is slightly the forgotten little brother. So, I feel like shining the spotlight on this book once in a while. I remember the joke that got me laughing. The chancellor or finance minister was in the elevator, trying to stack a load of books on his head. He was delighted when he finally cracked it, and announced to everyone ‘he’d finally managed to balance the budget.’ Although I didn’t really understand what that meant, I did get the joke, and thought it was very clever and wonderfully silly. It became a bit of a eureka moment for me in joke craftsmanship when I was a small child.” Read more...

Books to Make Your Kids Laugh

Tom McLaughlin, Children's Author

“It is an amazing story. It is very funny and also captures how wine tasters can use language to assert cultural superiority. The language is so particular to a certain sort of wine taster. It is almost like a private language….It’s complete elite snobbery. But the joke is that the taster who is using this language is a complete fraud. Dahl had his own issues, he was very elitist himself. The character in the book is a stockbroker who has a lot of new money, and with it he is trying to acquire taste, culture and sophistication.” Read more...

The best books on Wine

Randall Grahm, Cooks & Food Writer