The New York Herald Tribune described Roald Dahl as a conjure, with "a macabre imagination" and a distinctly offbeat sense of humor --albeit with "a good deal of compassion." Over and over writers and publishing companies saw the union of three seemingly conflicting characteristics in his adult and children's books: macabre, the moral, and the comic.
Gipsy House at Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire was home to writer Roald Dahl. Dahl believed in letting children explore nature and use their imagination. "Gypsies" were people who moved from place to place in wagons that were their homes. Dahl thought that would be a wonderful way to experience the world. He decided to call his home "Gipsy House," changing the spelling a bit. He even had a gypsy style wagon in his garden that his children played in. Dahl loved the countryside and had a beautiful, traditional English home, complete with English gardens. He loved to garden and even raised orchids! But... when it came time to write, he did not write in his beautiful home or even in the beautiful gardens. He wrote in his "writing hut," which was very small. The following video was filmed in that writing hut.
Let's Learn about Roald!
Roald Dahl (1916-1990) was born in Llandaff, Wales to Norwegian parents, Sofie and Harald. Emigrating from Norway in the 1880s, Harald made sure that his homeland continued to play a big part in family life: named after the Norwegian polar explorer and national hero, Roald Amundsen, Dahl was raised as a Lutheran. His first language was Norwegian, which he spoke at home with his parents and sisters Astri, Alfhild and Else, and half-siblings from his father’s first marriage, Ellen and Louis. Summer holidays were spent in Oslo, where his grandparents lived, and on the little island of Tjome — a tradition that Dahl would later continue with his own children. Writing about these trips to ‘the magic island’ in Boy: Tales of Childhood, the first of his autobiographies, he describes idyllic days filled with camping, boating, picnicking and swimming. Roald inherited a crystal clear and curious intellect from his parents. Sofie, a wonderful storyteller, regaled the children with fantastical tales of trolls that lived in Norway’s dark pine forests. And just like his father (a prolific diary scribbler), Roald kept a secret diary from the age of eight, hiding it in a tin box at the top of an enormous conker tree in the garden — out of reach from his nosy sisters. Dahl’s childhood was, however, not without tragedy. When he was three years old, his eldest sister, Astri, died from an appendicitis. Just a few months later, his devastated father died of pneumonia and a broken heart.
A rambunctious young boyA mischievous child, Dahl was full of energy and skilled at sniffing out trouble from an early age. His earliest memory was of racing to school on his tricycle at full speed, his sisters trailing behind him. When his half-sister’s fiancée, a young English doctor and avid pipe smoker, accompanied the family to Norway one summer, Roald carefully replaced the tobacco in his pipe with goat’s droppings — and then waited gleefully for him to inhale. At the age of seven, he earned a savage beating from the headmaster of Llandaff Cathedral School for his part in The Great Mouse Plot (hatched with three friends, it involved a dead mouse, a jar of gobstoppers and a mean old shopkeeper called Mrs Pratchett). After this incident, Sofie decided it was time to fulfil Harald’s dying wish for his son to receive an English public school education. He was sent away to boarding school — first to St Peter’s in Weston-super-Mare and then to Repton, a private school in Derbyshire.
At Repton the lively and imaginative Dahl — by now over six foot tall — felt stifled by the focus on rigorous academic learning and the ‘rules, rules and still more rules that had to be obeyed.’ Although he excelled at sports, his talent for writing had yet to be recognised, with one of his English teachers remarking in a school report that: ‘I have never met anybody who so persistently writes words meaning the exact opposite of what is intended.’ In Boy, he describes endless grey terms punctuated with sadistic violence as the teachers — and, even worse, the ‘boazers’ (prefects) — ruled with fear. In winter, the younger boys were made to heat up the wooden seats of the outside toilets for the boazers by sitting on them, bare-bottomed. Dahl did this so frequently that he managed to read the entire works of Charles Dickens on the lavatory.
There was, however, one thing that Roald did enjoy about his schooldays, and that was chocolate. Cadbury would send boxes of its confectionery to be taste-tested by the boys at Renton. Dahl imagined a glorious inventing room where grown men in white coats dreamt up ever more fantastical ways of delighting children with sugar. And that was where the idea for one of his most popular novels, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, was born. This love of chocolate lasted throughout Dahl’s life; as an adult, he kept a special red box full of chocolate bars at home, which would invariably make an appearance every night after dinner.
Flying solo Dahl turned down his mother’s offer to pay for his tuition at Oxford or Cambridge University after he graduated from Renton. Desperate for adventure, he wanted to join a company that would send him to ‘wonderful faraway places like Africa or China.’ And so he took a position with the Shell Oil Company in Tanganyika (now Tanzania). As he reveals in the second part of his autobiography, Going Solo, he got his wish: in between selling oil to customers, he learnt to speak Swahili, lived in the jungle and enjoyed incredible encounters with crocodiles and black mambas.
When the Second World War broke out, Dahl went to Nairobi to train with the Royal Air Force. He became a fighter pilot, flying a Hawker Hurricane and serving in the Mediterranean, until a plane crash in the Libyan desert put an end to this chapter of his career. After six months in hospital he was transferred to Washington, D.C. and made assistant air attaché, advising government representatives — a position he despised after the thrill of battle. He was also recruited by MI6 to supply intelligence to Britain from the US, working alongside novelist Ian Fleming.
It was in Washington that Dahl’s writing career began — after meeting the celebrated novelist C.S. Forester, who was also working to aid the British war effort. Encouraged by Forester, Dahl wrote his first short story about his wartime experiences, which was bought by The Saturday Evening Post for $1,000. He would later recall that, ‘becoming a writer was pure fluke. Without being asked to, I doubt if I’d ever have thought of it.’ Throughout the 1940s and ’50s Dahl continued writing short stories for adults, specialising in macabre tales with a deliciously dark twist. Many originally appeared in American magazines such as Harper’s and The New Yorker, and were later published as anthologies and brought to life on screen.
As his writing career struck the ascendant, the author’s personal life remained turbulent. In America, Dahl had acquired a reputation as a womaniser — tall and handsome, he was also an accomplished flirt and enjoyed numerous affairs. In 1952, he met the beautiful film actress Patricia Neal, marrying her a year later. Although they remained together for 30 years, producing five much-loved children, theirs was a union bound together by tragedy. In 1960, their four-month-old son Theo was struck by a taxi as he was being pushed in his pram. Facing severe injuries, including hydrocephalus (water on the brain), he would spend months in and out of hospital. Dahl, who had been fascinated by medicine all of his life, swiftly took action and collaborated with surgeons to invent the Wade-Dahl-Till valve that would help his son — as well as almost 3000 children around the world. Just two years later, their seven-year-old daughter Olivia died of measles encephalitis and Roald was left devastated. Then in the mid ‘60s, misfortune struck again as Patricia suffered a debilitating series of strokes. Roald imposed a strict regime of rehabilitation, eventually nursing her back to health.
Bedtime storiesDespite the hardships he endured, Roald never lost his boyish sense of mischief. In the family home at Great Missenden in Oxford, he delighted in making the mundane fantastic — serving pink milk for breakfast or blood-red rice pudding for dessert. At night he would often climb a ladder outside the children’s windows and pretend to blow good dreams through their windows as they slept. This would later become the story of the snozzcumber-guzzling giants, The BFG, Roald’s favourite of all his books.
In the children’s nightly bedtime stories, the seeds of Roald’s children’s books flourished. Beginning with the publication of James and the Giant Peach in 1961, Roald wrote all of these at Missenden in a tiny hut at the bottom of the garden — in long-hand, sitting in a battered old armchair. In 1983, Roald and Patricia divorced and Dahl re-married Felicity Ann Crosland (with whom he’d been having a lengthy affair) quickly afterwards. The last years of his life were happy and prolific ones, in which he wrote his most critically acclaimed books, including The Witches and Matilda.
Roald’s limitless imagination and his ability to see the world through a child’s eyes created some of the world’s most treasured children’s stories. He never forgot what it was like to be a small, scared child in a world of giants. Or how cruel and unjust grown ups could be. And he delighted in transporting children to a world where they could cunningly outwit and exact revenge upon their enemies in the most incredible ways; a world where they could believe in magic.
After becoming ill with a blood disease (myelodysplastic syndrome), Roald Dahl died on 23rd November 1990 at the age of 74. He was buried in Great Missenden with his beloved HB pencils and snooker cues, some very good burgundy wine — and, of course, chocolate.
(https://theculturetrip.com/europe/united-kingdom/wales/articles/the-story-of-roald-dahl/)
Roald Dahl & Norse Mythology - many see a parallel between Norwegian legends Roald had heard as a child and the stories he wrote --both have a blend of humor and fear.
I strongly recommend listening to Neil Gaiman reading his tales!
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Many grownups think Roald Dahl's stories are too macabre --that means that are disturbing or horrifying. Many of the characters are downright evil! Yet, Roald Dahl makes them funny at the same time. Most of his stories has a sensitive lesson at the end. Dahl grew up as a boy in Norway hearing the exciting tales of Norse mythology! Today kids think of Loki as someone in a video game! Neil Gaimon did a retelling of the Norse myths that is excellent the only thing better is listening to him read the stories on Audible. A number of the stories are appropriate for kids. They will love them! This also gives students an insight into what makes Roald Dahl... Roald Dahl!
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DESIGN YOUR OWN WRITING HUT! Roald Dahl wrote exclusively inside his Writing Hut. It was there his mind entered that place of creativity and expression. Design your own writing hut that you will use throughout this year. Think about it. Google famous sayings about writing. Choose a few you like to include on your board. Your board should include your name and anything else you think you show others you are in your writing hut. Use your imagination! |
Design puppets for the Escapologist and the Acrobat Story!
WHY DRAMA IS GOOD...
ACTIVITY 1 "THIS IS MORE THAN IT SEEMS!": "Once, on a summer's morning outside on the terrace, Roald Dahl taught his biographer how to shuck his first oyster, using his father's wooden pocketknife. Dahl holds the writer he had carried the pocketknife around the world with him since his schooldays. Years later, when the biographer told Dahl's daughter, Ophelia, that story, she roared with laughter. 'Ada was having you on,' she explained. 'It was just an old knife he had pulled out of the kitchen!'"
Bring any object from home (not a knife!) and create a tall tale about the object.
ACTIVITY 2 "FACES": Roald often invented stories about people he glimpsed through his car windows; he made up stories about the characters, giving detailed situations and plots simply from the look on someone's face or the way they were walking. Select a photo from the images provided and develop a character description and story plot. USE YOUR IMAGINATION!
ACTIVITY 3 "DESIGN YOUR WRITING SPACE":
ACTIVITY 4 "GREMLINS!"
Roald Dahl and another fighter pilot friend of his spent much of their sea voyage to Canada for training trading stories about gremlins. Dahl was already fascinated by the folklore that had grown up around the little imps and had begun to invent stories about them. "The gremlins," he wrote to the editor of a magazine he submitted one of his gremlin stories to, are a very real part of British pilots' conversations. Every pilot knows what a gremlin is and everyone of them talks about gremlins every day of their lives. They have horns and a long tail --they walk about on the wings of your aircraft boring holes in the fuselage and tinkering with other parts of the plane." Dahl's gremlin stories launched his career as an author. His gremlin stories ended up taking Dahl to both Hollywood and the White House.
The illustration of this gremlin was created by Disney and based on Roald's description. Disney set out to turn Dahl's characters into a feature animated film, but the project was never completed. Create a pesky character who works to upset a different area of life. What do they look like? What types of things does the creature do? What are their personalities like? Give the creature a name. |
ACTIVITY 5 - IDEA BOOK --Roald collected in his "Ideas Books" compilations of characters, situations and ideas that he thought might one day inspire or generate a story. His Idea Book had photographs or sometimes a newspaper cutting that he pasted on a page with comments that might be future ideas. He wrote down phrases and descriptions he liked, as well: "a pale grey face like a bowl of porridge," "legs like the legs of a chair," "face like crumpled brown paper," "a nose like a bathroom tap," "a small crooked mouth shaped like a keyhole." He compiled these fiction ideas for years and did so throughout his life. When he died, his idea book was left opened in the Writing Hut. The page read:
"The cleverest man in the world is called Mr. Billy Bubbler. He can invent just about anything you want. He has a marvelous workshop full of wheels and wires and buckets of glue and balls of string and huge pots full of thick foaming stuff that gives off smoke in many colors. There are old motorcar types, baskets of carrots and electric machines and sewing machines and fizzy-drink machines and bath tubs and cow's teeth and rice puddings and old shoes and everything else Mr. Bubbler needs to make his wonderful inventions."
"Cathy and her dog Zip go into the woods and meet a gypsy woman who teaches the young girl how to talk to her pet."
"A child can predict the future in her dreams."
"The characters in a book become aware that they are only alive when a child reads them, and so in order to prolong their existence, they try to seek that child out in real life before he or she finishes reading the book."
CREATE AN IDEA BOOK: You and I will spend part of each G.T. period writing ideas for fiction stories in our idea book and pasting in images that give us ideas, constructing phrases that are creative, and watching our ideas grow!
ACTIVITY 6 - THINGS I HATE: Found among Roald Dahl's papers after he died was a handwritten list entitled, "Things I Hate." His list was, believe it or not, CREATIVE! One of those things are his list was "bookshelves with an unread look." Can you make a list of things you hate that are creative? "Flesh" out each thing on your list --help us see what you see when you think about the things you hate.
***(extension)THINGS I LOVE: LET'S FLIP IT! Can you make a list of things you love that are creative? "Flesh" out each thing on your list --help us see what you see when you think about the things you love.
ACTIVITY 7 - MAGICAL THINKING & "THE AGENT": Most people agree that Roald Dahl was the master of entering a child's mind, but surprisingly, he wrote for adults almost all his life. In his short story, "The Wish" we see a young boy left on his own in a room with a multi-colored carpet. Her persuades himself that he must cross it only by treading on its yellow portions. If he steps on the wrong colors, he will either disappear into a black void or be killed by venomous snakes. It was after this story that his agent suggested he should consider writing a book for children. IMAGINE you are Roald's agent (find out what an agent does!). Write a letter to Roald, convincing him you think his story, "The Wish" suggests he should write a children's book.
ACTIVITY 8 - ADULT VILLAINS & KID HEROES: The villains in Roald Dahl's children's books were different than those found in most children's literature. Why? Because they were often grownups who were supposed to be trusted caregivers. His villains were cruel, selfish, greedy, lazy and violent such as this description of Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker in "James and the Giant Peach": Aunt Sponge was enormously fat and very short. She had small piggy eyes, a sunken mouth, and one of those white flabby faces that looked exactly as though it had been boiled. She was like a great white, soggy overbuild cabbage. Aunt Spiker, on the other hand, was lean and tall and bony, and she wore steel-rimmed spectacles that fixed on to the end of her nose with a clip. She had a screeching voice and long, wet, narrow lips, and whenever she got angry or excited, little flecks of spit would come shooting out of her mouth as she talked.
In Roald's books, the child is no longer a victim. Now he is resourceful and a shrewd problem solver, who takes control of his own destiny. Create an adult villain. What does the victim look like. Paint a vivid picture of your victim with descriptive, unusual words. Let you reader really see this villain!
ACTIVITY 9 - WRITING ABOUT WRITING: There is a saying that goes, "How do I know what I think unless I write it?" The same is true of writing: "How do I know why I write unless I think about it?" Roald didn't write because he had to for teachers. He wrote because it was something he simply DID. Let's see what he said about writing in a radio interview:
"You become a different person, you are no longer an ordinary fellow who walks around and looks after his children and eats meals and does silly things, you go into a completely different world. I personally draw all the curtains in the room, so that I don't see out the window and put on a little light which shines on my board. Everything else in your life disappears and you look at your bit of paper and get completely lose in what you're doing. You do become another person for a moment. Time disappears completely. You may start at nine in the morning and the next time you look at your watch, when you're getting hungry, it can be lunchtime. And you've absolutely no idea that three or four hours have gone by. So when you meet a musician or a writer, you shouldn't be surprised that they look exactly like ordinary people, because in that part of their lives they are . . . All the best artists I've known, like Hemingway and Steinbeck and EB White and Thurber, behave very normally in their private lives . . . They are ordinary people who have a secret compartment somewhere in their brain which they can switch on when they become quite alone and go to work."
So... What happens to you when you write? Be honest. Are there places or conditions that help you focus better on your writing? Do you think writing is important? Why or why not? It has been said that, "Writing allows you to recapture who you are and were," --what does that mean?
ACTIVITY 10 - AS YOU READ: As you read Matilda practice the art of "close reading." We will talk more about this, but your copy of Matilda is your's to keep! We will be writing in it, marking on it, and generally --making it ours.
ACTIVITY 11 - KIDS READING VERSES ADULT READING!: Did you know many adults and even many librarians DO NOT like Roald Dahl's children's books? They think they are gross, that the characters are too evil for kids, and that his word choices are often in what they call "bad taste." Dahl knew there were many adults who looked down on his books. His response? Dahl said, "I must keep reminding you that this is a book for children and I don't give a bugger what grown-ups think about it." What do you think makes a good, readable fiction book for kids?" "What makes a fiction book for kids one that you give up on or force yourself to read?" "If you could give advise to a children's author, what would you say?" You are the authorities --after all you are kids, so why don't YOU write that fiction book other kids will want to read?
ACTIVITY 12 - SHOULD CHILDREN'S STORIES HAVE HAPPY ENDINGS?: In "Witches" the Grand High Witch turns the boy narrator into a mouse. From then on, the reader sees the world from a rodent perspective. The now mouse narrator realizes that mouse do not live very long, and that he and his eighty six year old grandmother will probably not live much longer. Surprisingly, Dahl writes this in a way that is not of sadness, but childlike tenderness. As the mouse and the grandmother snuggle up together, they talk about how incredibly fast a mouse's heart beats. The grandmother tells her now mouse grandson, how she can hear his heart humming. The story continues: "The two of us remained silent in front of the fire for a long time after that, thinking about all these wonderful things. 'My darling,' she said at last, 'are you sure you don't mind being a mouse for the rest of your life?' 'I don't mind at all,' I said, 'It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like as long as somebody loves you." B U T.... when the book was turned into a movie, Warner Bros. felt the ending was too sad for children and changed the ending so that the mouse turned back into a boy. Roald was upset about this.
What do you think? Were the producers of the movie right in changing the story for the film. Should children's literature have only happy endings? What is your opinion? Why? Defend what you think in your writing to convince others that you have the best arguments to answer this question correctly.
ACTIVITY 13 - GIANTS & CHILDREN: Roald Dahl gave a talk where he told an audience of adults: "To children, grown-ups are giants, and consequently, whether it is the mother or the father or the teacher at times all of them are viewed by children as 'the enemy. This fact is something that adults do not realize. When I write a book which vilifies parents or teachers, as in 'Matilda,' children absolutely love it ... This is because the children shout, 'Hooray, here at last is a grown-up who understands what it is like to be one of us." You, guys, are the experts! Do you agree or disagree with Roald's belief? Are the adults in your life --even those you love --sometimes seen as the enemy? Why or why not?
ACTIVITY 14 - WHAT MAKES A GOOD CHILDREN'S WRITER?: Roald Dahl was asked this question. This is what he said: "What makes a good children's writer? The writer must have a genuine and powerful wish not only to entertain children, but to teach them the habit of reading... He must be a 'jokey' sort of fellow... He must like simple tricks and jokes and riddles and other childish things. He must be unconventional and inventive. He must have a really first-class plot. He must know what enthrall children and what bores them. They love being spooked. They love suspense. They love action. They love ghosts. They love the finding of treasure. They love chocolates and toys and money. They love magic. They love being made to giggle. They love seeing the villain meet a grisly death. They love a hero and they love the hero to be a winner. But they hate descriptive passages and flowery prose. They hate long descriptions of any kind. they like stories that carry a threat. 'D'you know what I feel like?" said the big crocodile to the smaller one. 'I feel like having myself a nice plump, juicy child for my lunch.' They love that sort of thing. What else do they love? New inventions. Secret information. Your story, therefore, must tantalize and titillate them on every page and all the time that you are writing you must be saying to yourself, 'Is this too slow? Is it too dull? Will they stop reading?' To those questions, you must answer yes more often than you answer no. If not, you must cross it out and start again.
WOW! Roald Dahl has a lot of ideas about what it takes to be a good children's writer? What do you think are the TOP THREE things you MUST do to have a good fiction novel for kids? Explain why you chose those?
ACTIVITY 15 - I AM AN AUTHOR!!!: Guess what? Yes. For the next month you will begin writing your own fiction novel! We will talk more about this as a group of writers in class. You will even be editors!
ACTIVITY 16 - THE WRITING ARM: Shortly before Roald Dahl died he said, "Sometimes it gives me a funny feeling that my writing arm is about six thousand miles long and that the hand that holds the pencil is reaching all the way across the world to faraway houses and classrooms where children live and go to school. That's a thrill all right."
Create an illustration that visually shows what Roald felt about his work in this statement.
"The cleverest man in the world is called Mr. Billy Bubbler. He can invent just about anything you want. He has a marvelous workshop full of wheels and wires and buckets of glue and balls of string and huge pots full of thick foaming stuff that gives off smoke in many colors. There are old motorcar types, baskets of carrots and electric machines and sewing machines and fizzy-drink machines and bath tubs and cow's teeth and rice puddings and old shoes and everything else Mr. Bubbler needs to make his wonderful inventions."
"Cathy and her dog Zip go into the woods and meet a gypsy woman who teaches the young girl how to talk to her pet."
"A child can predict the future in her dreams."
"The characters in a book become aware that they are only alive when a child reads them, and so in order to prolong their existence, they try to seek that child out in real life before he or she finishes reading the book."
CREATE AN IDEA BOOK: You and I will spend part of each G.T. period writing ideas for fiction stories in our idea book and pasting in images that give us ideas, constructing phrases that are creative, and watching our ideas grow!
ACTIVITY 6 - THINGS I HATE: Found among Roald Dahl's papers after he died was a handwritten list entitled, "Things I Hate." His list was, believe it or not, CREATIVE! One of those things are his list was "bookshelves with an unread look." Can you make a list of things you hate that are creative? "Flesh" out each thing on your list --help us see what you see when you think about the things you hate.
***(extension)THINGS I LOVE: LET'S FLIP IT! Can you make a list of things you love that are creative? "Flesh" out each thing on your list --help us see what you see when you think about the things you love.
ACTIVITY 7 - MAGICAL THINKING & "THE AGENT": Most people agree that Roald Dahl was the master of entering a child's mind, but surprisingly, he wrote for adults almost all his life. In his short story, "The Wish" we see a young boy left on his own in a room with a multi-colored carpet. Her persuades himself that he must cross it only by treading on its yellow portions. If he steps on the wrong colors, he will either disappear into a black void or be killed by venomous snakes. It was after this story that his agent suggested he should consider writing a book for children. IMAGINE you are Roald's agent (find out what an agent does!). Write a letter to Roald, convincing him you think his story, "The Wish" suggests he should write a children's book.
ACTIVITY 8 - ADULT VILLAINS & KID HEROES: The villains in Roald Dahl's children's books were different than those found in most children's literature. Why? Because they were often grownups who were supposed to be trusted caregivers. His villains were cruel, selfish, greedy, lazy and violent such as this description of Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker in "James and the Giant Peach": Aunt Sponge was enormously fat and very short. She had small piggy eyes, a sunken mouth, and one of those white flabby faces that looked exactly as though it had been boiled. She was like a great white, soggy overbuild cabbage. Aunt Spiker, on the other hand, was lean and tall and bony, and she wore steel-rimmed spectacles that fixed on to the end of her nose with a clip. She had a screeching voice and long, wet, narrow lips, and whenever she got angry or excited, little flecks of spit would come shooting out of her mouth as she talked.
In Roald's books, the child is no longer a victim. Now he is resourceful and a shrewd problem solver, who takes control of his own destiny. Create an adult villain. What does the victim look like. Paint a vivid picture of your victim with descriptive, unusual words. Let you reader really see this villain!
ACTIVITY 9 - WRITING ABOUT WRITING: There is a saying that goes, "How do I know what I think unless I write it?" The same is true of writing: "How do I know why I write unless I think about it?" Roald didn't write because he had to for teachers. He wrote because it was something he simply DID. Let's see what he said about writing in a radio interview:
"You become a different person, you are no longer an ordinary fellow who walks around and looks after his children and eats meals and does silly things, you go into a completely different world. I personally draw all the curtains in the room, so that I don't see out the window and put on a little light which shines on my board. Everything else in your life disappears and you look at your bit of paper and get completely lose in what you're doing. You do become another person for a moment. Time disappears completely. You may start at nine in the morning and the next time you look at your watch, when you're getting hungry, it can be lunchtime. And you've absolutely no idea that three or four hours have gone by. So when you meet a musician or a writer, you shouldn't be surprised that they look exactly like ordinary people, because in that part of their lives they are . . . All the best artists I've known, like Hemingway and Steinbeck and EB White and Thurber, behave very normally in their private lives . . . They are ordinary people who have a secret compartment somewhere in their brain which they can switch on when they become quite alone and go to work."
So... What happens to you when you write? Be honest. Are there places or conditions that help you focus better on your writing? Do you think writing is important? Why or why not? It has been said that, "Writing allows you to recapture who you are and were," --what does that mean?
ACTIVITY 10 - AS YOU READ: As you read Matilda practice the art of "close reading." We will talk more about this, but your copy of Matilda is your's to keep! We will be writing in it, marking on it, and generally --making it ours.
ACTIVITY 11 - KIDS READING VERSES ADULT READING!: Did you know many adults and even many librarians DO NOT like Roald Dahl's children's books? They think they are gross, that the characters are too evil for kids, and that his word choices are often in what they call "bad taste." Dahl knew there were many adults who looked down on his books. His response? Dahl said, "I must keep reminding you that this is a book for children and I don't give a bugger what grown-ups think about it." What do you think makes a good, readable fiction book for kids?" "What makes a fiction book for kids one that you give up on or force yourself to read?" "If you could give advise to a children's author, what would you say?" You are the authorities --after all you are kids, so why don't YOU write that fiction book other kids will want to read?
ACTIVITY 12 - SHOULD CHILDREN'S STORIES HAVE HAPPY ENDINGS?: In "Witches" the Grand High Witch turns the boy narrator into a mouse. From then on, the reader sees the world from a rodent perspective. The now mouse narrator realizes that mouse do not live very long, and that he and his eighty six year old grandmother will probably not live much longer. Surprisingly, Dahl writes this in a way that is not of sadness, but childlike tenderness. As the mouse and the grandmother snuggle up together, they talk about how incredibly fast a mouse's heart beats. The grandmother tells her now mouse grandson, how she can hear his heart humming. The story continues: "The two of us remained silent in front of the fire for a long time after that, thinking about all these wonderful things. 'My darling,' she said at last, 'are you sure you don't mind being a mouse for the rest of your life?' 'I don't mind at all,' I said, 'It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like as long as somebody loves you." B U T.... when the book was turned into a movie, Warner Bros. felt the ending was too sad for children and changed the ending so that the mouse turned back into a boy. Roald was upset about this.
What do you think? Were the producers of the movie right in changing the story for the film. Should children's literature have only happy endings? What is your opinion? Why? Defend what you think in your writing to convince others that you have the best arguments to answer this question correctly.
ACTIVITY 13 - GIANTS & CHILDREN: Roald Dahl gave a talk where he told an audience of adults: "To children, grown-ups are giants, and consequently, whether it is the mother or the father or the teacher at times all of them are viewed by children as 'the enemy. This fact is something that adults do not realize. When I write a book which vilifies parents or teachers, as in 'Matilda,' children absolutely love it ... This is because the children shout, 'Hooray, here at last is a grown-up who understands what it is like to be one of us." You, guys, are the experts! Do you agree or disagree with Roald's belief? Are the adults in your life --even those you love --sometimes seen as the enemy? Why or why not?
ACTIVITY 14 - WHAT MAKES A GOOD CHILDREN'S WRITER?: Roald Dahl was asked this question. This is what he said: "What makes a good children's writer? The writer must have a genuine and powerful wish not only to entertain children, but to teach them the habit of reading... He must be a 'jokey' sort of fellow... He must like simple tricks and jokes and riddles and other childish things. He must be unconventional and inventive. He must have a really first-class plot. He must know what enthrall children and what bores them. They love being spooked. They love suspense. They love action. They love ghosts. They love the finding of treasure. They love chocolates and toys and money. They love magic. They love being made to giggle. They love seeing the villain meet a grisly death. They love a hero and they love the hero to be a winner. But they hate descriptive passages and flowery prose. They hate long descriptions of any kind. they like stories that carry a threat. 'D'you know what I feel like?" said the big crocodile to the smaller one. 'I feel like having myself a nice plump, juicy child for my lunch.' They love that sort of thing. What else do they love? New inventions. Secret information. Your story, therefore, must tantalize and titillate them on every page and all the time that you are writing you must be saying to yourself, 'Is this too slow? Is it too dull? Will they stop reading?' To those questions, you must answer yes more often than you answer no. If not, you must cross it out and start again.
WOW! Roald Dahl has a lot of ideas about what it takes to be a good children's writer? What do you think are the TOP THREE things you MUST do to have a good fiction novel for kids? Explain why you chose those?
ACTIVITY 15 - I AM AN AUTHOR!!!: Guess what? Yes. For the next month you will begin writing your own fiction novel! We will talk more about this as a group of writers in class. You will even be editors!
ACTIVITY 16 - THE WRITING ARM: Shortly before Roald Dahl died he said, "Sometimes it gives me a funny feeling that my writing arm is about six thousand miles long and that the hand that holds the pencil is reaching all the way across the world to faraway houses and classrooms where children live and go to school. That's a thrill all right."
Create an illustration that visually shows what Roald felt about his work in this statement.