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My Year

Name: My Year
Author: Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake
ISBN: 9780670853977

by Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake

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About the Author, Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake

Roald Dahl

Kids and adults alike love Roald Dahl’s deliciously wicked books. Loved for their gleefully evil villains and their often mischievous sensibility, Dahl’s books introduce us to fantastic creatures and bizarre places -- and encourage our imaginations to run wild.

Biography

"I have never met a boy who so persistently writes the exact opposite of what he means," a teacher once wrote in the young Roald Dahl's report card. "He seems incapable of marshaling his thoughts on paper." From such inauspicious beginnings emerged an immensely successful author whom The Evening Standard would one day dub "one of the greatest children's writers of all time."

Dahl may have been an unenthusiastic student, but he loved adventure stories, and when he finished school he went out into the world to have some adventures of his own. He went abroad as a representative of the Shell corporation in Dar-es-Salaam, and then served in World War II as a pilot in the Royal Air Force. After the war, Dahl began his writing career in earnest, publishing two well-received collections of short stories for adults, along with one flop of a novel.

The short stories, full of tension and subtle psychological horror, didn't seem to presage a children's author. Malcolm Bradbury wrote in The New York Times Book Review, "[Dahl's] characters are usually ignoble: he knows the dog beneath the skin, or works hard to find it." Yet this talent for finding, and exposing, the nastier sides of grown-up behavior served him well in writing for children. As Dahl put it, "Writing is all propaganda, in a sense. You can get at greediness and selfishness by making them look ridiculous. The greatest attribute of a human being is kindness, and all the other qualities like bravery and perseverance are secondary to that."

In 1953, Dahl married the actress Patricia Neal; two of his early children's books, James and the Giant Peach (1961) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) grew out of the bedtime stories he made up for their children. Elaine Moss, writing in the Times, called the latter "the funniest children's book I have read in years; not just funny but shot through with a zany pathos which touches the young heart." Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a colossal hit. A film version starring Gene Wilder was released in 1971 (as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory), while James and the Giant Peach was made into a movie in 1996.

Dahl followed his initial successes with a string of bestsellers, including Danny, the Champion of the World, The Twits, The BFG, The Witches and Matilda. Some adults objected to the books' violence -- unpleasant characters (like James’s Aunts Sponge and Spiker) tend to get bumped off in grotesque and inventive ways -- but Dahl defended his stories as part of a tradition of gruesome fairy tales in which mean people get what they deserve. "These tales are pretty rough, but the violence is confined to a magical time and place," he said, adding that children like violent stories as long as they're "tied to fantasy and humor." By the time of his death in 1990, Dahl's mischievous wit had captivated so many readers that The Times called him "one of the most widely read and influential writers of our generation."

Good To Know

When Dahl was in school, he and his schoolmates occasionally served as new-product testers for the Cadbury chocolate company. Dahl used to dream of working in a chocolate manufacturer's inventing room. He wrote in his autobiography, "I have no doubt at all that, 35 years later, when I was looking for a plot for my second book for children, I remembered those little cardboard boxes and the newly invented chocolates inside them, and I began to write a book called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

Dahl's first book for children, The Gremlins (1943), was a story about the mythical creatures that sabotaged British planes. (Dahl claimed for most of his life that he had coined the term "gremlins," but it had been in use by members of the Royal Air Force for years.) Walt Disney planned to use it as the basis for a movie, but the project was scrapped, and only 5,000 copies of the book were ever printed.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In the year before he died, Dahl (1916-1990) recorded his impressions--drawn from a lifetime of rich experiences in the English countryside--of each passing month. This delightfully warm and intelligent book is the result. The renowned author describes the natural world as he recalls childhood feelings and events, including memories of cherished toys and games, and a spectacular prank. In a thoroughly beguiling mix of tones, the narrative voice is at times opinionated (``What has happened to these children? . . . Boys should want to climb trees''), censorious (``The cuckoo is the nastiest bird in the sky. Too lazy to build its own nest, too lazy to feed its own young''), paternal, factual and confessional (``I had learnt even at that tender age that there are no secrets unless you keep them to yourself, and this was the greatest secret I had ever had to keep in my life so far''). Throughout, Dahl comes through strongly as a genial, witty and occasionally eccentric soul. Blake's watercolor and ink illustrations, simultaneously defined and soft, and made whimsical with curvy lines, are an ideal match. All ages. (Feb.)

School Library Journal

Gr 4 Up-The author's personal reminiscences of boyhood exploits, interwoven with adult observations on various natural phenomena of the English countryside. Each short chapter covers one month, and addresses some peculiarity of one or more species of plant or animal (magpie, mole, mosquito, saffron, cuckoo, foxglove, etc.). Written in his 74th year, these recollections speak to children in the comfortable, but sometimes preachy, manner of an elderly man addressing his grandchildren. Many of the trees and animals he mentions are more abundant in Europe or called by a different name there (i.e., horse chestnuts are called conkers), while some are indigenous only to small sections of the U.S. or are variants of the species found here and will be unfamiliar to American readers. Differences in the British school year add a bit of confusion, as well. Dahl recalls escapades (riding his illicit motorbike past his prep school each Sunday during his final summer term) as well as useful gardening tips (burying wine bottles with only the necks sticking up to scare away moles). Blake has lovingly highlighted the pages of this slim volume with many soft, sketchy watercolor cartoons. Devotees of Dahl's Boy (1984) and Going Solo (1986, both Farrar) will surely request this one, as well.-Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH

Ilene Cooper

There's good news and bad news about this offering from Dahl written in the last year of his life. The good news is, it's quite an interesting nature study, divided by months, in which Dahl describes the various flora and fauna seen around Gipsy House, his country home; interspersed with the descriptions are tales of his youth. The bad news is, Gipsy House is in Buckinghamshire, England, and so American kids won't be familiar at all with certain flowers, bushes, and, especially, birds, such as hedge sparrows or lapwings ("some call them peewits, some plovers"), though they may take a keen interest in the blue tit. However, the rest of the good news is, Dahl's writing is so fresh and vivid that even when one barely knows what he's talking about, his observations are enjoyable. An example: Dahl explains he adores September because it's the Month of the Conker and how he loved, as a boy, knocking down conkers, and even set a school record at conker 109. There's more, but the point is that, though the American reader may have no idea what conkers are, Dahl makes the whole conker experience sound fun anyway. Quentin Blake's watercolor illustrations are charming and delicate here, and completely capture the mood of the book.