Matilda (original 1988; edition 1990)

Dahl, Roald. Matilda. New York: Puffin Publishing, 2004.
Characters: Matilda, Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood, Jennifer Honey, Miss Trunchbull.
Setting: Metropolitan
Theme: Hero
Genre: Young children
Golden Quote: “I’m right and you’re wrong, I’m big and you’re small, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Summary: Matilda is a young and extremely intelligent girl living in a home with her parents. Her parents are not the most caring people in the world, in fact, they can be downright ugly. Matilda uses her smarts to outwit them and play pranks on them for their poor behavior. When Matilda goes to school, she develops a very close relationship to her teacher Miss Honey. Miss Honey and Matilda develop a strong bond with one another, because Miss Honey encourages Matilda to continue studying hard and tells Matilda the she will try to convince her parents and the headmistress Miss Trunchbull to allow Matilda to advance grades. The headmistress treats Matilda very poorly and in a conversation with Miss Honey, Matilda finds out that Miss Honey is actually the headmistress’s niece. When Matilda finds this out, she also finds out that she has telekinetic powers and she uses this power to scare the head mistress into returning to Miss Honey what is truly hers. In the end, you see Matilda’s growth and she does get to skip grades. Her parents flee from prosecution due to her father’s shady business dealings. They agree to leave Matilda with Miss Honey, who will take care of her.
Audience: Young children.
Curriculum: English, literature and leisure reading.
Personal Response: Matilda is a book that will keep children turning the page, wondering what sort of antics she will be up to next. Her pranks and tricks that she plays on her parents are funny and the way that she uses her telekinetic powers are very creative. This is a great book which teaches children even if they are in a bad situation, if they keep a positive outlook, good things will happen.

I loved this book about a precocious child who loves to read when I was young, and I still do. As in all Dahl's tales, mean and bad people (usually grownups) get their comeuppance and the good but mistreated people are rewarded.

The figure of Miss Trunchbull is one of Dahl's best villains - ridiculously over-the-top, she still reminds everyone of a teacher who terrified them at school.

Above all, the story of Matilda shares the joy of reading. It's definitely a book to recommend to children of all ages! ( )

Loved the book, hate the film. That little lisping twit drove me nuts. She wasn't Matilda! Matilda would never lisp! I also hated that she got to keep her powers at the end just because they didn't feel like explaining that it was better that she didn't have them.

Ah fuck it. Anyway.

I loved Matilda because I loved to read when I was a kid. It's as simple as that. She read, I read. Of course, I wasn't anywhere near as precocious as she is in the book, but I can live with that. Her parents are fabulously awful. And for some reason I picture Miss Trunchbull as my gran. Doesn't quite live up to my favourites The BFG or The Witches, as it feels just a shade slighter character-wise than those, but I do love it. ( )

Bought myself the Kindle edition of this, because I love it so and I'll be glad to carry it around with me. It's my favourite Roald Dahl book of all, I think. The Kindle edition includes Quentin Blake's illustrations, which in my view is necessary. The film version of Matilda was very good, and well-cast, but Blake's illustrations are the first faces I have for the characters, and it's amazing how he gives them life.

Roald Dahl's writing is as quirky and fun in this book as ever, though maybe a bit less gross, and I think there's also a lot of tenderness in the way he describes Matilda and Miss Honey, as well as the glee of children in their triumph over Miss Trunchbull. Miss Honey is a big kid, in a way: she never got to triumph over Miss Trunchbull as a child, the way many of Dahl's child characters do triumph over their tormentors, but here she finally gets her resolution.

One thing I did love, in the film, was the tiny glimmer of... something, between Matilda and her mother, at the end. The sense that her mother was doing something for her, maybe for the very first time, and they both knew it and had an odd moment of connection over it. It isn't in the book, but I sort of wish it had been.

I'm always sad when it gets to the part where Matilda stops having powers. Still, it made it feel that much more real -- of course I can't do what Matilda does, I'm in a good school and being taught well, I don't have the brainpower left for powers! Mmmmhmm. ( )

Matilda's parents don't realize that she is an exceptional child -- they're only interested in watching television and making money. Matilda's extraordinary intelligence is noticed only by the local librarian -- and, when Matilda starts school, her teacher Miss Honey. But the headmistress of the school, Miss Trunchbull, unfairly pegs Matilda as a troublemaker. While being bored out of her wits in the kindergarten class (Miss Trunchbull won't let Matilda move up to a more suitable grade), Matilda learns that she can do amazing things with the power of her brain. Can Matilda solve her own problems, and Miss Honey's as well?

Confession time: I've never been a Roald Dahl fan. Some kids read everything by him that they can get their hands on. I remember one of my cousins talking about his books with a sort of evangelical fervor, but I just never cared much for him while I was growing up. (This may have been because I was a stubborn and contrary child, and if a book was recommended to me too often, I resisted reading it.) Now, as an adult and a children's librarian, I am quickly catching up on some of his books because I have to do a classroom visit featuring Roald Dahl. I'm enjoying his books now, and I probably would have enjoyed them as a child, if I had given them half a chance. Don't be stubborn like me, kids! ( )