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Monday, July 11, 2005

Kid's Literature

Anybody else read Roald Dahl when they were a kid? I read several of his books and remember really enjoying them. I especially liked Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Oomp Loompa story about the girl who got into her grandmother's pill collection and ended up spending a good part of the rest of her life sitting in the bathroom was so amusing to my 10 year old sensibility that I insisted on reading it out loud to friends when they came over. This article in the New Yorker contends that while kids love Dahl's writing most adults hate it. My girls are not quite to the age where they can appreciate his sort of story but that time is fast approaching so I guess I will find out what I think of the stories as an adult. Lemony Snicket owes quite a bit to Dahl (or so says the article) and I think the three books of his that I have read are fantastic so I suspect I may still like Dahl as well. I did enjoy a few of his adult short stories, including the most famous one about the woman who kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb and they calmly serves it to the police who come to investigate the crime several hours later and wonder what became of the murder weapon. I also seem to remember a TV show called Tales of the Unexpected (or something like that) that may have used some of his stories, but I could be mistaken on that.

7 Comments:

I haven't read Dahl. Liked the movie, though. Excited for the new one, too.

By Hammer, at 2:51 PM

I took the New Yorker article as saying that people who first read Dahl as adults but didn't as children didn't like him. I can't imagine having anything other than affection for his writing, but I read him as a kid too. Loved The Twits, in particular.

I'm not sure about the new movie. I got kind of a creepy Michael Jackson vibe from Johnny Depp when I saw the trailer.

By ben. for reals., at 12:02 PM

I think the Wonka character ought to be unnerving.

By Hammer, at 12:12 PM

I kind of felt the critics found him too subversive, siding too much with kids rather than the parents. But come on, that's half the fun in a kid's story, isn't it?

From what little I could get from the preview the new version seemed to be a little more mean spirited than the original movie. And of course most movies (even good ones) fail to really capture the charm of the original writing.

By Jambo, at 12:14 PM

Unnerving, yes. Child molester-y, not so much.

By ben. for reals., at 12:59 PM

Maybe it'll be good fodder for teaching kids about the dangerous of affection.

By Hammer, at 2:10 PM

Apparently better than sending them off to Lutheran Bible Camp.

By Jambo, at 3:43 PM