In the run up to my exciting new Roald Dahl book project, I thought I might go into a bit of detail about how I came to be the Dahl fan I am today, why I love his stories so much and what has inspired me to do this book project.
Starting off with how I first came into contact with Dahl's stories. Well, I can't remember a time where I first read one of books or listened to one of them on audio cassette tape, yes, I grew up with audio cassette tapes, such things are just unheard of nowadays. But in all seriousness, I don't recall when I first saw something with his name on it and started reading it and falling in love with it.
I just grew up reading his books and being entertained by celebrities reading his stories on audio cassette tape. Fantastic Mr Fox read by Martin Jarvis was a personal favourite of mine.
Dahl wrote loads for children, I think he wrote for adults as well, and he did some stories with a twist which were as thoroughly enjoyable as his other work. But his ten most successful stories that stick out in peoples minds include the following :
James and the Giant Peach
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Fantastic Mr Fox
Danny the Champion of the World
The Twits
George's Marvelous Medicine
The BFG
The Witches
Matilda
Esio Trot
Those are Dahl's top ten. I think the reason as to why I like him so much is that I admire his clever wit and inventive ideas, he has a way of expressing dark themes in his stories without making it so obvious to children, making it entertaining for them and not frightening.
I also like how he makes adults turn out to be the stupid ones and that children are the clever ones, for a child reading something like "Matilda" for example it opened my eyes so much with characters like Mr Wormwood who is this self-loving, poxy, con artist-businessman who thinks he's clever by ripping people off when of course he gets punished for his impertinence when Matilda decides to super glue his hat to his head and it's very funny.
It's also Dahl's humour and choice of words that make his books stand out amongst all the rest. He is in a way like his characters, Willy Wonka is a genius with chocolate, Dahl's a genius with words. Such words as Snozwanglers and Whizpoppers are just joyful to pronounce. He made reading for me, very fun and it was his books that taught me how to read.
I came up with the idea to do this book project as a way of bringing Dahl's worlds to life again, and interpret them through the voices of actors/ people who I know reading them like on the audio books. It's a lot of fun, and I thought why not. It's Dahl.
