George's Marvelous Medicine

Well this is a weird little book.

I know Dahl has written a few disturbing stories in his time, but this one has to be right up there with the disturbing-est of them. I’m not comfortable rating it at this time, mostly because it’s entirely possible that kids would like this book more than grownups. I don’t know what kid-me would have made of this, but grownup-me isn’t impressed.

Even the premise is wacky. There is a boy, George, who lives with his parents and his grandmother. The grandmother is old and sick, and because of this, she isn’t always very pleasant. (That seems fair . . . It’s hard to be cheerful when you don’t feel good.) One day, in a moment of either mischief or senility, she mentions that she has certain show more powers, and the boy gets a little bit scared of these alleged witchy powers that, as far as I can tell, she doesn’t even really have.

So he disposes of her medicine and replaces it with his own concoction, which, wouldn’t you know it, actually has real, non-alleged witchy powers.

Despite being super-gross and potentially lethal (I mean, come on, it’s got antifreeze in it, along with a bunch of other household chemicals), this potion actually puts her in a good mood. Unfortunately, it also alters her physically, and permanently. I won’t spoil too much here, except to say that things don’t end well for her, but nobody else seems to care. Well, the mom cares, a little bit, at first, but she gets over things speedily enough. Old people are a burden anyway. Hooray!

I mean, really? What on earth did I just read?

It’s too disturbing to be funny, it’s too bizarre to be scary, it’s too much of a downer to be whimsical, and the protagonists are too callous for me to enjoy the adventure. There’s one other thing, too. It may be that I’m reading too much into this, but I am irked at the unspoken implication that a woman who isn’t constantly cheerful isn’t worthy to live. Between this and The Witches, in which the magical forces preying on children are always female, I’m a bit disappointed. It’s hard to come to grips with the idea that this came from the same author who wrote such a wholesome adventure in James and the Giant Peach, and who gave us such a calm, dignified, and self-possessed heroine in Matilda. This just feels like a vindictive kid who takes his frustration out on an old, sick, feeble relative.

Again, I’m not exactly the target audience, and I recognize that my adult perspective may be hindering me from appreciating Dahl’s intent.

Still, wow. Not my cup of tea (er, I mean, medicine). show less

Well this is a weird little book.

I know Dahl has written a few disturbing stories in his time, but this one has to be right up there with the disturbing-est of them. I’m not comfortable rating it at this time, mostly because it’s entirely possible that kids would like this book more than grownups. I don’t know what kid-me would have made of this, but grownup-me isn’t impressed.

Even the premise is wacky. There is a boy, George, who lives with his parents and his grandmother. The grandmother is old and sick, and because of this, she isn’t always very pleasant. (That seems fair . . . It’s hard to be cheerful when you don’t feel good.) One day, in a moment of either mischief or senility, she mentions that she has certain show more powers, and the boy gets a little bit scared of these alleged witchy powers that, as far as I can tell, she doesn’t even really have.

So he disposes of her medicine and replaces it with his own concoction, which, wouldn’t you know it, actually has real, non-alleged witchy powers.

Despite being super-gross and potentially lethal (I mean, come on, it’s got antifreeze in it, along with a bunch of other household chemicals), this potion actually puts her in a good mood. Unfortunately, it also alters her physically, and permanently. I won’t spoil too much here, except to say that things don’t end well for her, but nobody else seems to care. Well, the mom cares, a little bit, at first, but she gets over things speedily enough. Old people are a burden anyway. Hooray!

I mean, really? What on earth did I just read?

It’s too disturbing to be funny, it’s too bizarre to be scary, it’s too much of a downer to be whimsical, and the protagonists are too callous for me to enjoy the adventure. There’s one other thing, too. It may be that I’m reading too much into this, but I am irked at the unspoken implication that a woman who isn’t constantly cheerful isn’t worthy to live. Between this and The Witches, in which the magical forces preying on children are always female, I’m a bit disappointed. It’s hard to come to grips with the idea that this came from the same author who wrote such a wholesome adventure in James and the Giant Peach, and who gave us such a calm, dignified, and self-possessed heroine in Matilda. This just feels like a vindictive kid who takes his frustration out on an old, sick, feeble relative.

Again, I’m not exactly the target audience, and I recognize that my adult perspective may be hindering me from appreciating Dahl’s intent.

Still, wow. Not my cup of tea (er, I mean, medicine). show less

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 show more 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 show less

Tongue just barely in cheek here. Eight-year-old George's grandma is horrible to him, especially when his parents aren't around, so one day when his dad is in the fields and his mom is at the grocery store, George decides to mix up his own medicine to replace Grandma's usual brown stuff. He proceeds to empty cans, bottles, and jars of all kind of inedible and poisonous substances from every room in the house into a big soup pot, gives it a stir and some heat, then pours a spoonful for his grandma...oh boy does it ever make a difference.

Grandma grows, Alice-style, till her head pokes through the roof; when George's father arrives home, he's less worried about his mother-in-law than about the potential to make enormous chickens, cows, show more pigs, and sheep. But will the second batch have the same effect as the first?

A fun sort of revenge story, as long as readers "don't try this at home."

*

Steam was shooting out of Grandma's mouth and nose and ears and whistling as it came.
"She'll feel better after she's let off a bit of steam," Mr. Kranky said. show less

George’s grandmother is a really nasty piece of work. One day, George is left on his own to look after her, and after being nagged once too often, he decides to get revenge and using various items he finds lying around the house, he creates a disgusting potion to give to her in place of her usual medicine.

Here’s where the fun really begins as the medicine has all sorts of different effects on Grandma - George must try to make medicine to make her shrink again. He mixes and blends and combines the various ‘ingredients’ he used in his original blend to try to find a cure, but this might prove difficult…

In the days of ‘PC gone mad’ I’m sure there are plenty of people who frown upon this story, although the book does show more contain a message in the front just before the story starts warning children not to try making their own medicine at home! As an adult, I love the dark nature of Dahl’s stories. This one is one of my favourites so far! show less

I'm going to rate this five stars because I think this is my favourite Roald Dahl book.

The thing that I love about Roald Dahl is how respectful he is of children. He writes in such a way that acknowledges a child's intelligence, their intuition and how perceptive they are. And I love, that in all of that, Dahl can pick apart an adult's expectations or perceptions of the world and show that in some cases, they are flawed, and adults aren't perfect. Roald Dahl writes in a way that is creative, without being condescending, and I think that is essential in a brilliant children's novel like this.

I love this book when I was a kid because I loved how cheeky George was, I loved the bizarre list of medicinal ingredients that he came up with. show more When I reread it a few years ago, I found that I still totally enjoyed it and giggled my way through it.

So, yeah, overall it was an excellent read, and I would read it again. c: show less

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 show more 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.

This review has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds. show less