A taste of her own medicine . . .

Are you sick? If you are, you gotta have some of George's Marvelous Medicine! George's grandma is the meanest grandma on the block, a "horrid, grouchy, grizzly, old grunion of a grandma." You can't help but laugh as the grouchy old woman tells George that he is growing the wrong way (he should be growing down, not up) and scares him half to death with her piercing stare and strange tales, "I know a great many secrets... Some of us know secrets that would make your hair stand straight up on end and your eyes pop out of their sockets..." She is, in short, profoundly disgusting.

So George decides to make a medicine that will fix his Grandma's attitude forever. She needs something stronger than her usual medicine to cure her grouchiness. A special grandma medicine, a remedy for everything. Just wait until Grandma drinks this!

The abject cruelty in this story is one of its best points. It's a funny, funnstory for anyone who's ever thought about getting revenge on another person. Any child or adult with a sense of humor will love this wild, ridiculous, and zany book!

Roald Dahl is a masterful story-teller, and children tend to enjoy the fact that he is never condescending and always seems to be on "their side."

Book Details:

Title George's Marvelous Medicine
Author Roald Dahl
Reviewed By Purplycookie ( )

What more can I say other than Roald Dahl is a writing genius! Again, Dahl delivers a fun, humorous and creative story spun with magic and wonder. If only I could tap into his writing muse and channel his creativity my way. The characters are fun, simple yet memorable. The descriptions are carefully crafted and consistent with Dahl's collection of colorful stories. This book is yet another example of how Dahl takes the time to include the simplest detail in which helps the reader to imagine the characters so alive and in color. This book is silly, gross, fun and simply wonderful! If you want to have some fun with kids, read this story. ( )

George, the central character of George's Marvelous Medicine, is unusual for a Roald Dahl protagonist. He's not an orphan, nor is he impoverished. His parents even seem to be fairly normal, caring people. He only really has one problem - his grandmother is not a particularly nice person. In fact, we are told, she is mean and evil, although the evil she displays in the book amounts mostly to bossing George around.

In response, George decides to replace his grandmother's normal medicine with his "marvelous" concoction. He wanders about the house when his parents are away pouring everything he can lay his hands on, from toothpaste and shampoo to animal pills, hot peppers, and motor oil, into a single pot, which he cooks up with a helping of brown paint to make the brew look like his grandmother's usual brown medicine. (Oddly, the one category of things he doesn't add to his recipe are the pharmaceuticals intended for humans in the medicine chest, on the grounds that that would be dangerous). He then feeds the result to his grandmother.

As this is a Dahl book, the mess doesn't kill her immediately, but rather makes her grow ridiculously tall, and farm animals grow to champion size, which pleases George's farmer father immensely. George can't remember the recipe, so once they have used it making animals on the farm huge, he has to try to make more. After a couple experiments, George's gigantic grandmother grabs a batch and shrinks to nothingness. And the story ends.

Of all the Dahl stories, this is one of the weakest. George's animosity for his grandmother seems out of proportion to her actions. Although she is bossy, obnoxious, cranky, and even downright mean, shrinking her to nonexistence seems to be a bit over-the-top as a response. The concoction itself seems to be little more than poison, and no explanation is given why this would work, or why George would think feeding his grandmother antifreeze laced medicine would do anything other than kill her.

While most Dahl books involve outrageous stuff, the trouble with this book is that everything seems entirely out of proportion to the provocation, Unlike The Witches, where the witches want to turn all the children in England into mice, or the evil giants in The BFG, where the man-eating giants run off to eat a couple dozen people every night, the nasty nature of George's grandmother seems tame. Also in most of Dahl's books, the silly plans to counter the villains are usually backed up by some sort of explanation, even one as simple as the bag of magic the kicks off the action in James and the Giant Peach. In George's Marvelous Medicine, George simply decides to wander around the house one day mixing all the household chemicals he can get his hands on to feed to his grandmother.

The story has moments such as the silly reactions that some of the animals have to George's later efforts to recreate the medicine. These keep the book from dropping below merely average, but the weakness of the story prevents the book from rising above that mark. ( )

There is something about Raold Dahl's books that are delightful, and yet sinister in an awkward kind of way. George's Marvelous Medicine is one of those works. Dahl's story contains a single child George acting in a mean spirited manner to a family member he doesn't like.

Giving his nasty, selfish grandmother a brewing concoction of medicine, she grows to un-heavenly heights and then using marvelous medicine number four, George and his father shrink granny out of existence.

Interestingly, dad helps to get rid of maternal granny while mommy looks on asking "Where is she?" "I've lost her!" "Hooray" says Mr. Kranky. Daddy teaches George that when people are grumpy and nasty spirited, you simply poison them.

I don't particularly like the moral of the story.
But, I will continue to read Dahl's books because some of them are so creative. ( )

Re-read this book after talking about childhood authors and thoroughly enjoyed it again. ( )