I am a huge, huge, huge Roald Dahl fan. Lemony Snicket, Harry Potter, movies like UP–the children’s stuff that is filled with old-fashioned delight rather than of-the-moment brattiness, the stuff whose subtext is “The world is interesting and fantastic, if a bit uncontrollable” and not “The world is no larger than you/your princess fantasy/your vampire lover/your lunch-table grievance of the day”–all of that stuff is in debt to Roald Dahl. I think my favorite will always be Danny, the Champion of the World, but The BFG (big fucking grundle) runs a close second in terms of making a simple wish (justice in the former, freedom in the latter) into a delicate, real-life, completely un-precious fantasy.
A few things. The Big Friendly Giant, the way he talks: “‘Wales is whales,’ the Giant said. ‘Don’t gobblefunk around with words. I will now give you another example. Human beans from Jersey has a most disgustable woolly tickle on the tongue.’” While I marvel at the way Jersey Shore is retrofitting great books with hilarious associations, I also marvel at how the BFG speaks like Dobby the house-elf/Jar-Jar Binks/that huge yellow thing on Gullah Gullah Island (did he talk? what was that thing?) but still manages to be awesome and not annoying at all. He also says many delightful words like “hippodumplings” and “hipswitch.”
Another thing. As a writer I think about Roald Dahl whenever I think about perfect description. I don’t know if it’s a thing about kids’ books, where you’re so familiar with the descriptions that they begin to seem pre-established and real, but Roald Dahl’s words are so perfect. Pared-down and clear while still being lush and friendly, it’s like this: “Sophie, still peering out from the blanket, saw suddenly ahead of her a great craggy mountain. The mountain was dark blue and all around it the sky was gushing and glistening with light. Bits of pale gold were flying among delicate frosty-white flakes of cloud, and over to one side the rim of the morning sun was coming up red as blood.”
We read to our kids every night — and all day when we aren’t taking them out on other adventures, and nothing gets our 3-year-old going like a book where “The world is interesting and fantastic, if a bit uncontrollable.”
It’s not always easy — Greta doesn’t read Seuss’s Sulla Sallo (sp?) anymore beause of the dreaded poozers, but for the most part she lives in a magical world that has in large part been inspired by Seuss, Goodnight Moon, Where the Wild Things Are, Lyle Lyle Crocodile, and all sorts of other alternative realities.
Ultimately, I think that magical thinking is the greatest gift we can give our kids. Reading is one way, obviously, but only if you avoid giving them pat morality tales and limited worlds.
Fortunately it doesn’t have to end. I can’t wait to introduce Greta (and Kate) to Dahl, Rowling, Pullman, et. al.
Yes, absolutely. It’s too bad that the simple fantastic drops off so sharply as readers approach double digits, and sad that adult literature is almost necessarily interested in not presenting the world like that. The authors who have come the closest in approaching that freewheeling kiddy openness (magical realists? Kerouac? Vonnegut?) are still deeply sad, don’t you think? Either way, I envy your kids for the buffet of good reads that awaits them!
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