This year Penguin Young Readers and the Roald Dahl
Literary Estate are celebrating 100 years since the birth of Roald Dahl —the
world’s number one storyteller.
Wow, can you believe it has been 100 years since Roald Dahl was born? Roald Dahl's books have been so special to me ever since elementary school. I gobbled up so many of his books, including The BFG, The Witches, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Matilda. I couldn't get enough of them! Roald Dahl definitely contributed to my love of reading as a child that has only flourished now that I am an adult. When Penguin asked if I wanted to participate in thier blog tour honoring one of the most creative men I have even had the pleasure of reading work from, I knew I couldn't say no!
In honor of Roald Dahl's 100th birthday, Penguin Young Readers will publish new collectible hardcovers editions of some of Roald Dahl's beloved stories on September 6, 2016, including Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and James and the Giant Peach!
In honor of Roald Dahl's 100th birthday, Penguin Young Readers will publish new collectible hardcovers editions of some of Roald Dahl's beloved stories on September 6, 2016, including Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and James and the Giant Peach!
As part of the celebration, Penguin Young Readers has also released brand new covers of all of Roald Dahl's works. I have the honor of celebrating the newest cover for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!
1
Here Comes Charlie
These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr.
Bucket. Their names are Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine.
And these two very old people are the father and mother of Mrs. Bucket.
Their names are Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina.
This is Mr. Bucket. This is Mrs.
Bucket.
Mr. and Mrs. Bucket have a small
boy whose name is Charlie Bucket.
This is Charlie.
How d’you do? And how d’you do? And
how d’you do again?
He is pleased to meet you.
The whole of this family—the six
grownups (count them) and little Charlie Bucket—live together in a small wooden
house on the edge of a great town.
The house wasn’t nearly large
enough for so many people, and life was extremely uncomfortable for them all.
There were only two rooms in the place altogether, and there was only one bed. The
bed was given to the four old grandparents because they were so old and tired.
They were so tired, they never got out of it.
Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine
on this side, Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina on this side.
Mr. and Mrs. Bucket and little Charlie
Bucket slept in the other room, upon mattresses on the floor.
In the summertime, this wasn’t too
bad, but in the winter, freezing cold drafts blew across the floor all night
long, and it was awful.
There wasn’t any question of them
being able to buy a better house—or even one more bed to sleep in. They were
far too poor for that.
Mr. Bucket
was the only person in the family with a job. He worked in a toothpaste
factory, where he sat all day long at a bench and screwed the little caps onto
the tops of the tubes of toothpaste after the tubes had been filled. But a
toothpaste cap-screwer is never paid very much money, and poor Mr. Bucket,
however hard he worked, and however fast he screwed on the caps, was never able
to make enough to buy one-half of the things that so large a family needed.
There wasn’t even enough money to buy proper food for them all. The only meals
they could afford were bread and margarine for breakfast, boiled potatoes and
cabbage for lunch, and cabbage soup for supper. Sundays were a bit better. They
all looked forward to Sundays because then, although they had exactly the same,
everyone was allowed a second helping.
The
Buckets, of course, didn’t starve, but every one of them—the two old
grandfathers, the two old grandmothers, Charlie’s father, Charlie’s mother, and
especially little Charlie himself—went about from morning till night with a
horrible empty feeling in their tummies.
Charlie
felt it worst of all. And although his father and mother often went without
their own share of lunch or supper so that they could give it to him, it still
wasn’t nearly enough for a growing boy. He desperately wanted something more
filling and satisfying than cabbage and cabbage soup. The one thing he longed
for more than anything else was . . . CHOCOLATE.
Walking to
school in the mornings, Charlie could see great slabs of chocolate piled up
high in the shop windows, and he would stop and stare and press his nose
against the glass, his mouth watering like mad. Many times a day, he would see
other children taking creamy candy bars out of their pockets and munching them
greedily, and that, of course, was pure torture.
Only once a
year, on his birthday, did Charlie Bucket ever get to taste a bit of chocolate.
The whole family saved up their money for that special occasion, and when the
great day arrived, Charlie was always presented with one small chocolate bar to
eat all by himself. And each time he received it, on those marvelous birthday
mornings, he would place it carefully in a small wooden box that he owned, and
treasure it as though it were a bar of solid gold; and for the next few days,
he would allow himself only to look at it, but never to touch it. Then at last,
when he could stand it no longer, he would peel back a tiny bit of the paper wrapping at one corner to expose a tiny bit of chocolate, and then he would
take a tiny nibble—just enough to
allow the lovely sweet taste to spread out slowly over his tongue. The next
day, he would take another tiny nibble, and so on, and so on. And in this way,
Charlie would make his ten-cent bar of birthday chocolate last him for more
than a month.
But I
haven’t yet told you about the one awful thing that tortured little Charlie,
the lover of chocolate, more than anything
else. This thing, for him, was far, far worse than seeing slabs of
chocolate in the shop windows or watching other children munching creamy candy
bars right in front of him. It was the most terrible torturing thing you could
imagine, and it was this:
In the town
itself, actually within sight of the
house in which Charlie lived, there was an ENORMOUS CHOCOLATE FACTORY!
Just
imagine that!
And it
wasn’t simply an ordinary enormous chocolate factory, either. It was the
largest and most famous in the whole world! It was WONKA’S FACTORY, owned by a
man called Mr. Willy Wonka, the greatest inventor and maker of chocolates that
there has ever been. And what a tremendous, marvelous place it was! It had huge
iron gates leading in to it, and a high wall surrounding it, and smoke belching
from its chimneys, and strange whizzing sounds coming from deep inside it. And
outside the walls, for half a mile around in every direction, the air was
scented with the heavy rich smell of melting chocolate!
Twice a
day, on his way to and from school, little Charlie Bucket had to walk right
past the gates of the factory. And every time he went by, he would begin to walk
very, very slowly, and he would hold his nose high in the air and take long deep
sniffs of the gorgeous chocolatey smell all around him.
Oh, how he
loved that smell!
And oh, how
he wished he could go inside the factory and see what it was like!
About Roald Dahl
Roald
Dahl (1916-1990) was born in Wales of Norwegian parents. In 1951, Roald Dahl met
his future wife, the American actress Patricia Neal, who starred in films
including The Day the Earth Stood Still,
Breakfast at Tiffany's, and Hud, for which she won an Oscar. After establishing himself as a writer for adults, Roald
Dahl began writing children's stories in 1960 and wrote two of his best-known
novels, James and the Giant Peach and
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in
the U.S.
In September 1964, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was
published initially in the U.S. with the U.K. following a few years later. It
would go on to become one of the most famous and best-known of Roald's stories.
The idea for the story grew out of his own well-documented love of chocolate
and his school-day memories of acting as a taster for a famous chocolate
factory. These first stories were written as
entertainment for his own children, to whom many of his books are dedicated.
Today, Roald Dahl’s stories are available
in 58 languages and have sold more than 200 million books. With more than 40 million Roald Dahl books in print in the U.S.
alone, Dahl is considered one of the most beloved storytellers of our time and
his popularity continues to increase as his fantastic novels, including James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The BFG,
and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,
delight an ever-growing legion of fans.
For
more information please visit www.roalddahl.com/usa
Instagram: @roald_dahl * Don’t forget to hashtag
#roalddahl100
