A long time ago, in 1916, a little boy was born to Norwegian parents living in South Wales. His father was a successful businessman, but idiosyncratic to say the least. He wanted his children to have an appreciation of beauty, so before they were born he spent hours taking his pregnant wife ... Read review
Advantages: Eek they have these here too! Disadvantages: Bums.
A long time ago, in 1916, a little boy was born to Norwegian parents living in South Wales. His father was a successful businessman, but idiosyncratic to say the least. He wanted his children to have an appreciation of beauty, so before they were born he spent hours taking his pregnant wife on "glorious walks" to take in the natural splendour of the countryside. In this way he hoped that the wonder of nature and an appreciation ... ...The little boy's father had only one arm, but got along just fine with the aid of various ingenious gadgets he'd invented for himself, like the sharpened fork which acted as all three forms of cutlery, which he kept in a special case in his pocket. He also kept a long and involved diary. Sadly, the little boy's father died when he was still very young.
The little boy was Roald Dahl and doesn't it sound like the little boy grew up to ... more
A long time ago, in 1916, a little boy was born to Norwegian parents living in South Wales. His father was a successful businessman, but idiosyncratic to say the least. He wanted his children to have an appreciation of beauty, so before they were born he spent hours taking his pregnant wife on "glorious walks" to take in the natural splendour of the countryside. In this way he hoped that the wonder of nature and an appreciation of it would somehow be transmitted to his unborn child. The little boy's father had only one arm, but got along just fine with the aid of various ingenious gadgets he'd invented for himself, like the sharpened fork which acted as all three forms of cutlery, which he kept in a special case in his pocket. He also kept a long and involved diary. Sadly, the little boy's father died when he was still very young.
The little boy was Roald Dahl and doesn't it sound like the little boy grew up to be very like his father - an inveterate scribbler, inventor and appreciator of good things, with a little bit of eccentricity thrown in? Boy is a collection of stories Roald Dahl has to tell about his babyhood and schooldays, beginning of course, as all stories of childhood should begin, with a setting of the scene, and an explanation of the things which went before. After his father's death the Dahl family did not return home to Norway, but stayed in Wales, for Dahl senior had been a great supporter of the public school system and had always wanted his children to have an English education. His mother was determined to fulfil that aim. Dahl's first school was in Llandaff in Cardiff, and his memories of it are sparse in comparison with his memories of the sweet shop nearby:
"The sweet shop in Llandaff in the year 1923 was the centre of our lives. To us, it was what a bar is to a drunk, or a church to a bishop. Without it, there would have been little to live for. But it had one terrible drawback, this sweet shop. The woman who owned it was a horror... Her name was Mrs Pratchett. She was a small skinny old hag with a moustache on her upper lip and a mouth as sour as a green gooseberry."
Oh, if that little bit isn't enough to make you read Boy then shame on you! I love it. Only Dahl would mention a drunk and a bishop in a children's book, only Dahl would remember the importance of sweets, or the horror of a nasty lady behind the counter and brook no argument when calling her a hag. Of course Mrs Pratchett is very nasty, losing no opportunity to short-change the children with their sweets or to generally be disparaging and unpleasant. Marvellously, she receives her comeuppance, for Dahl and his little group of friends one day place a dead mouse in the gobstopper jar when she's not looking, with hilarious and awful consequences.
Summers were wonderful for the Dahl family, for then they returned to Norway, a huge travelling circus they made:
"We were always an enormous party. There were my three sisters and my ancient half- sister (that's four), and my half-brother and me (that's six), and my mother (that's seven), and Nanny (that's eight), and in addition to these there were never less than two others who were some sort of anonymous ancient friends of the ancient half-sister (that's ten altogether).
I must be tempting you by now, surely? There is another, wonderful piece of Dahl, for how children love to count, and list and repeat and to hear counting and listing and repeating. Those holidays were full of lazing, and boating, and eating, in far-away, secluded Norwegian islands and they were full of fun, and naughtiness too, of course. Once, the ancient half-sister took her pompous boyfriend along who really did get on everyone's nerves but hers. One of his most annoying habits was his constant pipe- smoking, and while he was swimming one of Dahl's sisters replaced all the tobacco in the bowl of the pipe with crushed goat droppings. When he returned the entire family watched him smoke, aghast, before falling into hysterics as he realised what had happened.
And that is only the beginning. However, Boy is only a short, slim little book, over before you know it, leaving you hungry for more (don't worry, there are two further volumes) and so I'd better not tell you much else. Soon enough, Dahl makes the step from prep to boarding school, and here things aren't so blissful. The rigid, incomprehensible discipline, the endless push for pigeon-holing and conformity and the cruel, institutionalised ways this was enforced often left Dahl lonely, homesick and afraid. He wrote home to his mother every week and even after countless readings of the book I still get a tight, sad, terrible feeling inside when I see some of the copied letters, signed "love, Boy" and when I read of the horrors of ritualised corporal punishment. Still, these times weren't without their amusements, and anyway, I've given away too much already. You should read them for yourself. Boy is written with every bit of the skill Dahl has brought to children's fiction - it is amusing, honest, rhythmic, wry. And it provides also a fascinating insight into the inspiration for all that wonderful fiction.
Perhaps one of the reasons we all find stories so satisfying is that stories, both invented and true, are like a thin layer torn from a part of a whole: rounded but at the same time incomplete. Stories can entertain and they can teach, they can make us happy or they can make us sad, but the most valuable thing they give is a sense of inclusion, a sense of feeling an indivisible part of that whole. Stories are amongst the most precious of all the things we have, and often the true ones are the most important of all. Sometimes, at bedtime, Conor, Kieran and I don't read our stories from a book; we tell them to each other - stories of ourselves today, or of me when I was a child, or of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and friends. It usually begins with, "Mummy, tell us about before we were in your tummy." And it makes us smile.
Autobiographies probably have more to tell us about selves than about times and places, they are more stories than histories, I think. I think too, that this is a good thing, and I think Roald Dahl would have agreed with me. He prefaces Boy with a few words:
"This is not an autobiography. I would never write a history of myself. On the other hand, throughout my young days at school and just afterwards a number of things happened to me that I have never forgotten... Some are funny. Some are painful. Some are unpleasant. I suppose that is why I have always remembered them so vividly. All are true."
In this way, autobiography, or stories about oneself, whether written down so wonderfully by Dahl, or simply told at bedtime by parents, give a shared, public form to a person's private meanings - including, enriching, and connecting with the child who listens. Every life is worth recording, worth getting down truthfully. What could be more fascinating than a human life in all its strength and frailty? For the life we live today is enlarged and enriched by what we learn about past lives.The most wonderful thing about Boy is that Roald Dahl is a writer who never lost that acute sensory ability of a child to see, hear and smell with a vividness that is lost in adulthood, or that simple, honest directness lost too in adulthood that is not afraid to speak of what it sees. School, to Dahl, was often a terrifying, incomprehensible place, governed by incomprehensible adults and yes, English public schools with their rigid discipline and desire to enforce conformity aren't the places I'd choose to send my children. But perhaps, when you're tiny, all schools seem a bit like that. Can you remember? Roald Dahl can and perhaps even with this book he wanted, finally, to win his argument.
For children and for adults, make no mistake about that, Boy will make you laugh, as Dahl always does, with its outrageous tales of dead mice in sweet jars, and goats poo in smoking pipes. It will make you shudder with awful stories of the cane and noses hanging by threads of flesh and it will make you cheer for the goodies (mostly children, of course) and boo-hiss the baddies (mostly those adults foolishly trusted with any degree of authority). There's a bottom or two in there as well, always a good thing. Oh, it's a wonderful book, full of the most rich and arresting detail. And you'll have hours of fun spotting the inspiration for the most awful of characters in all the other Dahl creations. But most of all it will make you feel included, a part of that whole from which it is taken.
Read and share Boy with your children. Tell and share stories about yourself too. Collect and treasure all the stories that you can.
Advantages: Great book, easy to read Disadvantages: Time flies when you read it
November 1990 was a sad time for England. Not because the country’s two largest satellite broadcaster, Sky and British Satellite Broadcasting joined to form BSkyB, nor because we lost Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister. In fact, it was as far removed from these two incidents as you could possibly imagine. On 23rd November 1990, aged 74, Roald Dahl, creator of several of the world’s most engaging children’s books died as a result of a rare blood ... ...great talent whose imagery and imagination live on forever in books such as Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, The Witches and The BFG.
Released in 1984, Boy is as close to an auto-biography as you can get. In fact, Dahl’s bold statement early in the book sums up his feelings: “An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details. This is not an autobiography. I would never write a history ...
SeasonTicketless 20.05.2004
· Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Boy: Tales of Childhood - Roald Dahl
Advantages: Wonderfully written, full of Dahl's delightful storytelling ability Disadvantages: Over all too quickly
As an English Teacher, I come across all manner of extracts from assorted novels in textbooks - selected paragraphs of Potter, or snippets of Orwell and Huxley chosen for some part of the language they contain. However, no author seems to feature as regularly as Roald Dahl; perhaps it's because his books are especially accessible, or perhaps there's something essentially English in character about his writing. In any case, I always enjoy coming across ... ...read dozens of times before are still delightfully funny, clever and fresh. Boy is the first part of Roald Dahl's autobiography, published in 1984 and covering the first twenty years of his life. From his earliest memories and childhood holidays up to the day he left school and set off for the world of work, this memoir recounts a range of the moments Dahl remembered most fondly. There are plenty of gaps here - Boy is more of a highlights reel than ...
Puggers 25.02.2009
· Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Boy: Tales of Childhood - Roald Dahl
Advantages: great book lots of interesting scenes Disadvantages: could go ino more detail
“Boy” is an autobiography by Roald Dahl and describes his eventful childhood. The book describes his holidays to Norway, his schooldays and his family history. It describes his eventful everyday life and the unusual adventures within it. The book begins in an exciting fashion as it describes his very unusual upbringing and members of his family.
The main character is obviously Roald Dahl himself as it is an autobiography and subsequently the book ... ...that appear quite a lot include his friends, his family – his mother, ancient-sister, stepfather, sisters and brothers, a stern shopkeeper and the school matron. Even though Dahl is unable to remember the characters names, he makes his characters memorable with his vivid description of them. One of my most memorable characters in “Boy” is the Math’s teacher who did not know anything about Maths, but spent most of the time telling exciting stories ...
dotcom1001 19.01.2005
· Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Boy: Tales of Childhood - Roald Dahl
I love this book so much, I made my older sister go out and buy it for me straight away!!(Much to her distress!!)
It is the interesting account of Roald Dahl's childhood, filled with facts and photographs, so you can really imagine yourself living there.
I have read most of Roald Dahl's books, but this will always be my favourite because it's the only one in which we actually meet him, and discover his past, and live through his childhood with ...
gaffers_son 04.08.2000
· Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Boy: Tales of Childhood - Roald Dahl
Advantages: Great Read, Easy for young children Disadvantages: time goes to quick when you read it
I have read this book so many times and I loved it from the first time I read it to the last time I read it. You can never get bored with this book. I am a huge fan of Roald Dahl and I think his books are great. This has to be my favorite book of his as it has funny bits in it and serious bits in it. I think all children's books should have some serious bits in it. This book is an autobiography from Roald Dahl himself telling events in his life.
... ...parts of his life. I will tell about them now.
~~~Starting Point~~~
In this part of the book there is 2 chapters `Papa and Mama' and `Kindergarten' as you can probably tell the chapter `Papa and Mama' is all about his mum and dad, and the chapter `Kindergarten' is all about his time in nursery(Kindergarten). This chapter is ok but it isn't exciting.
~~~Llandaff Cathedral School-1923-5(Aged 7-9)~~~
This part of the book is really exciting. There ...
Jamz.13 17.03.2007
· Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Boy: Tales of Childhood - Roald Dahl
Similar products and search queries by other users »
Boy Dahl, Boy Tales Dahl, Boy of Dahl, Boy Childhood Dahl, Boy Roald Dahl, Boy Tales of Dahl, Boy Tales Childhood Dahl, Boy Tales Roald Dahl, Boy of Childhood Dahl, Boy of Roald Dahl, Boy Childhood Roald Dahl, Boy Tales of Childhood Dahl, Boy Tales of Roald Dahl, Boy Tales Childhood Roald Dahl, Boy of Childhood Roald Dahl
Are you the manufacturer / provider of Boy: Tales of Childhood - Roald Dahl? Click here
