Roald Dahl: A Blast from the Past

Roald Dahl, a world-renown children's novelist, was born in Llandorff, Wales on September 13^th, 1916. He was the son of an incredibly imaginative mother, who frequently told him and his sisters fantastic stories of "trolls and other mythical Norwegian creatures." Dahl looked up to his mother and found great inspiration for his writing from her. In fact, he wrote The Witches, one of his children's novels, as a tribute to her. While Dahl's success is attributed to his children's books, Dahl started the first fifteen years of his career writing short stories for adults. Eventually, after becoming inspired by making up bedtime stories for his two daughters, Dahl decided to start writing for children. He found entertaining children to be much more challenging than entertaining adults and thus came to love his work very much. And while Dahl's novels are decades old, his stories are still appreciated by children and young adults throughout the world today.

Dahl's works are incredibly entertaining, imaginative, and unique -- very much so like that of his mother's tales. His novels touch on both fantastic and modern day settings, but his characters are all especially lively out-of-the-box thinkers. Such an example would be George Kranky from George's Marvelous Medicine, my favorite novel of Roald Dahl's. The story takes place on an average farm and is about a boy who lives with his mother, father, and very cantankerous grandmother. To "cure" his grandmother's crankiness, George decides to brew a medicine and erratically throws a bunch of ingredients he finds around the house together in a pot. In the end, George develops a medicine which enlarges those who drink it, but in an attempt to recreate the medicine for other farmers, his grandmother takes a dose of an experimental brew which shrinks her until she disappears. Dahl's creativeness knows no bounds. And while his novels contain few, if any, morals, they stimulate the imaginations of their readers.

As a college-bound student, I still find Roald Dahl's books pleasurable to read (though now more of a guilty pleasure than not). Dahl's books provide a strong gateway between my youth and me; I feel as if I were five years old again, crawling under the covers with The BFG, wondering if I would get a dream from The Big Friendly Giant tonight. And I know that if I were to dream, I would be having a fantastically jubilant adventure.

"Roald Dahl Biography," Roalddahl.com.