Happy Birthday, Roald Dahl!

"If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely." -Roald Dahl, The Twits

I have some very happy memories of growing up reading Roald Dahl. I couldn't get enough of the made-up words, quirky humor, nasty villains and creative plots. In the world of Roald Dahl, animals talked, peaches swelled to immense sizes, chocolate was mixed by waterfall, witches were real, and vermicious knids were a dangerous threat. Each book was imaginative and delightful. Children were the heroes, always smarter than given credit for.

Of course Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a favorite of mine. But have you heard of the sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator? And Fantastic Mr. Fox, in which I gleefully cheered on Mr. Fox as he outsmarted the wicked farmers Boggis, Bunce, and Bean. If you read The Witches, you may be so convinced by the descriptions that you start to see witches everywhere you go!

So Happy Birthday Roald Dahl! His website is loads of fun, click here to access it.

I highly recommend some of my favorite Roald Dahl books, found in the Lackawanna County Library System. Share them with the children in your life, or read them yourself! I still do. :) And check out the movies based on those books as well!

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Mathilda
The Twits
James and the Giant Peach
George's Marvellous Medicine
The BFG
The Witches
...And more!

Laura
On behalf of the ACL