book report on matilda

Matilda, by Roald Dahl | Book Review

Book Review of Matilda The Children’s Book Review

Written by Roald Dahl

Illustrated by Sarah Walsh

Ages 6-9 | 192 Pages

Publisher: ‎ Viking Books for Young Readers | ISBN-13: ‎ 9781984836106

Matilda  was the last long kids’ book that Roald Dahl wrote before he passed away in 1990. When Dahl first wrote the book, she was a wicked child and very different from how she is now known to readers worldwide.

Matilda is a very kind-hearted character—she’s a gifted, intelligent, book-loving five-year-old who taught herself to read. She has read every children’s book in the library and a few for adults. Matilda can even do advanced math in her head. Her father (a rotten car salesman) and her mother (obsessed with playing bingo) are completely clueless and treat her almost as terribly as the nasty Miss Trunchbull, the child-hating, ex-Olympic hammer-throwing headmistress at school.

When Matilda meets Miss Honey, a warm-hearted and sweet teacher, she finds her inner strength and uses her newly-discovered exceptional talent to fight back and set more than a few things right in her world. Matilda’s character is certainly one to get behind—she’s empowering, knowledgeable, and brave—and the entire story is freckled with funny bits and peppered with plenty of practical jokes.

This edition contains complete and unabridged text and includes brand-new color illustrations by Sarah Walsh. The artwork brings loads of energy and charisma to the carefully curated cast that Dahl created.

When you read Roald Dahl’s  Matilda,  you’ll be snickering from start to end.

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About the author.

Roald Dahl  (1916-1990) was born in Wales to Norwegian parents. He spent his childhood in England and, at age eighteen, went to work for the Shell Oil Company in Africa. When World War II broke out, he joined the Royal Air Force and became a fighter pilot. At the age of twenty-six, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he began to write. His first short story, which recounted his adventures in the war, was bought by The Saturday Evening Post, and so began a long and illustrious career.

After establishing himself as a writer for adults, Roald Dahl began writing children’s stories in 1960 while living in England with his family. His first stories were written as entertainment for his own children, to whom many of his books are dedicated.

Roald Dahl is now considered one of the most beloved storytellers of our time. Although he passed away in 1990, 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.

Learn more about Roald Dahl on the official Roald Dahl website:  www.roalddahl.com .

About the Illustrator

Sarah Walsh is an internationally published illustrator whose project range spans from picture books, apparel, home decor, and greeting cards, to name a few. Her work has also been featured on Creative Pep Talk, Buzzfeed, and The Jealous Curator. Sarah has been a working artist since 2001, starting as a designer/illustrator hybrid at Hallmark Cards in Kansas City. In 2013 she branched off solo style into the freelance world after connecting with an art agent named Lilla Rogers. Bright color, fashion, mid-century design, the ’80s, fantasy, hand lettering, world culture, and folk art are some of the elements that inform her work. Sarah’s been fortunate enough to collaborate with clients like Chronicle, Blue Q, Nosy Crow, The Guardian, & Frankie Magazine.

Writing and illustrating a children’s book or working with a fashion designer to create an haute couture clothing line are two of her dream projects! When Sarah isn’t busy doing client work, she fills her sketchbook with personal paintings or creates products such as art prints, enamel pins & pillows for Tigersheep Friends, with her husband Colin Walsh, a fellow illustrator.

You can find her work at Sarahwalshmakesthings.com .

Matilda , written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Sarah Walsh, was reviewed by Bianca Schulze. Discover more books like  Wilderlore: The Accidental Apprentice by following our reviews and articles tagged with Classics , Illustrated Chapter Books , and Roald Dahl .

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Bianca Schulze is the founder of The Children’s Book Review. She is a reader, reviewer, mother and children’s book lover. She also has a decade’s worth of experience working with children in the great outdoors. Combined with her love of books and experience as a children’s specialist bookseller, the goal is to share her passion for children’s literature to grow readers. Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, she now lives with her husband and three children near Boulder, Colorado.

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by Roald Dahl

• Matilda Summary

Matilda Wormwood is a young girl who is extraordinarily brilliant. At a young age, she can solve complex math problems in her head and read books meant for adults. Unfortunately, though, Matilda has grown up with parents who do not give her the attention and love she deserves. Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood and their son, Michael, are quite different from Matilda, preferring to watch television than read books. They do not understand her, and often treat her badly.

Rather than feel hopeless, Matilda plays tricks on her family to get back at them for the way they treat her, replacing her father's hair tonic with platinum hair dye and using a parrot to convince them that their house is haunted. These tricks give Matilda some agency, and distract her parents from mistreating her.

Matilda starts school late for a girl her age, and is placed in the lowest form in Crunchem Hall Primary School. Matilda's teacher, Miss Honey , is a wonderful, sweet woman, and she immediately recognizes Matilda's intelligence and seeks to move her into the highest form, where she can maximize her potential. Unfortunately, though, Crunchem Hall is run by a terrible woman named Miss Trunchbull . She is massive and muscular, having been a former Olympic athlete for Britain. She absolutely loathes children and treats the students horribly, keeping them in line with terrible punishments such as the "Chokey," a thin closet with walls made of nails where students have to stand straight up for hours when they misbehave.

Miss Trunchbull will not move Matilda to the highest form, so Miss Honey keeps her in her class, giving her advanced books to study while the rest of the class learns basic lessons. She does her best to nurture Matilda's mind and allow her to learn new things. Meanwhile, Matilda quickly befriends the other students in school and learns about the ways they resist Miss Trunchbull's terror. The peak of Miss Trunchbull's horrible antics is reached when she calls a school-wide assembly, and makes a boy named Bruce Bogtrotter eat an entire giant chocolate cake on his own in front of everyone as punishment for stealing a slice of hers. To her surprise he does it without getting sick or quitting, a small victory for the students against her.

Miss Trunchbull comes into Miss Honey's class for one period each Thursday to take over, and she terrorizes the students with difficult math and spelling questions and punishes them with physical abuse when they cannot answer. Matilda's friend Lavender , seeking to get revenge on Miss Trunchbull, sticks a large newt in her drinking glass, sending Miss Trunchbull into a frenzy. Miss Trunchbull blames Matilda for placing the newt there, even though she did not do it, and Matilda gets so angry that a peculiar sensation of power comes over her and she manages to knock the water glass over with her mind, pouring the newt onto Miss Trunchbull's bosom.

Matilda is awed and frightened by her newfound power, and when she demonstrates it for Miss Honey, the teacher invites her back to her cottage to talk. Matilda is mystified when she sees Miss Honey's cottage, a tiny, sparse place hardly fit for living. Miss Honey reveals her life story to Matilda: her parents died when she was young, leaving her in the care of her cruel aunt, who has bullied her and forced her to work ever since. This terrible aunt takes nearly every cent of Miss Honey's salary, so she cannot afford to live anywhere but this tiny shack. At last, Miss Honey reveals who this aunt actually is: Miss Trunchbull.

Matilda comes up with a plan to get back at Miss Trunchbull and help Miss Honey. She hones her power until she can make objects move in the air at her will, and then the following week when Miss Trunchbull comes in to teach their class, she has the chalk move on its own and write an ominous message to Miss Trunchbull. Miss Trunchbull believes that the message has come from Magnus , Miss Honey's deceased father. Panicked, she disappears, moving out of his house and leaving Crunchem Hall.

When Magnus's will mysteriously appears, it is revealed that his house belonged to Miss Honey all along, as do his life savings. She moves in immediately, and Matilda is a frequent visitor. Under the new head teacher, Matilda is moved up to the highest form, where she finds that because her mind is challenged with hard work, she has lost the ability of telekinesis. She discusses this with Miss Honey but decides she does not mind that it is gone.

When she returns home that day she sees her parents and brother in a frenzy, packing up to move to Spain because her father has finally been caught for being involved with criminals who sell stolen cars. Miss Honey offers to adopt Matilda so she can stay and live with her, and Matilda's parents, who never truly cared about her, agree to the plan.

Matilda Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Matilda is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Compare and contrast the characters of Matilda and Ms Honey.Under what circumstances do they grow up?How do they each respond to their circumstances? What is the significant of the two of them becoming a family at the end of the novel?Provide detaild from

This is only a short answer space. I can make a general comment.Miss Honey is Matilda’s school teacher and the first person to appreciate and foster Matilda’s extraordinary intelligence. She attempts to bring Matilda’s gift to the attention to...

who is matilda? describe her with 5 words

Matilda is the titular character and the protagonist of Roald Dahl’s Matilda. Unlike her other family members, who are selfish and dull, Matilda is a precocious child with a love of books and a high aptitude for mathematics.

-intelligent

What is the purpose of paragraphs 1-5

Can you quote the whole sentence that you mean?

Study Guide for Matilda

Matilda study guide contains a biography of Roald Dahl, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Matilda
• Character List

Essays for Matilda

Matilda essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Matilda by Roald Dahl.

• Language, Power, and Gender: The Power Dynamics of Language and Social Class in Three Children’s Books

Lesson Plan for Matilda

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Matilda
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Matilda Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Matilda

• Introduction
• Writing the novel
• Dahl's inspiration

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Matilda by Roald Dahl - review

The exceptional Matilda is about a smart, easily infuriated little girl who is misunderstood by her parents and loathed by the school's headmistress. On the other hand her kind and generous teacher, Miss Honey, thinks she is a brilliant academic genius. Matilda has a number of excellent schemes in her head to teach her nasty parents and headmistress a lesson.

Whilst Matilda is the novel's central character many readers will be drawn to the larger-than-life, extrovert, humourous and strangely likeable headmistress, Miss Trunchbull. Her unique reprimands to the children, with phrases such as 'blithering idiot' and 'stagnant cesspool' will leave you in stitches.

The novel is littered with excellent examples of Dahl's use of creative imagination to keep the reader's attention alive such as when Matilda uses her magical eyes to write a truthful message to the headmistress on the blackboard.

On a disappointing note for me, Quentin Blake's doodle-like illustrations failed to match Dahl's impressive and brilliant character descriptions.

Despite this Matilda is a fantastic and entertaining novel and I recommend it to children aged 7 – 12 and a must read for lovers of Roald Dahl . Four out of five stars!

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Chapters 1-6

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Chapters 15-21

Character Analysis

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Summary and Study Guide

Roald Dahl’s 1998 children’s fantasy Matilda tells the darkly humorous story of a brilliant and kindly little girl who reads grown-up books, plays pranks on her emotionally abusive parents, and uses her telekinetic ability in her battles with a tyrannical school principal.

Dahl is widely considered one the greatest children’s storytellers. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide; they include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, The BFG, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Many of Dahl’s tales, including Matilda, have been made into feature films. The 2007 Penguin edition includes illustrations by Quentin Blake; its ebook version forms the basis for this study guide.

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Plot Summary

Often left alone at home by her neglectful, self-involved parents, Matilda Wormwood teaches herself to read at age three; by age five, she’s read all the children’s books at the local library and more than a dozen adult classics like Great Expectations and The Grapes of Wrath. Matilda also has a knack for math and can do arithmetic in her head.

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Her parents have no interest in books and think Matilda’s wasting her time. Her father, Harry Wormwood, dresses garishly and sells run-down used cars faked-up as nearly new; he proudly teaches his young son, Michael, the fine points of cheating customers. Matilda’s mother spends afternoons playing Bingo and evenings watching TV. Both parents are self-important and small-minded; they regard their daughter as an annoyance, and they treat her rudely.

Matilda decides to get even with them. She puts superglue into her father’s porkpie hat, and it takes him a day to get it removed, along with a lot of his hair. She borrows a neighbor’s parrot and positions the caged bird in the chimney; when the parrot speaks during dinner, it terrifies her parents, who believe it’s a burglar or a ghost. She switches her mother’s platinum hair dye with her father’s hair lotion, causing him to convert his hair from black to ashy white.

Matilda enters Crunchem Hall Primary School , where her teacher is the kind and lovely Miss Honey , who quickly recognizes Matilda’s genius and gives her advanced schoolwork. She tries to convince Matilda’s parents to take seriously their child’s brilliance, but the Wormwoods dismiss the idea.

The headmistress, Miss Trunchbull is powerfully built and mean to the children, whom she despises. A former Olympic hammer thrower, Trunchbull has a knack for lifting up children who annoy her and throwing them through windows or over fences. One boy is caught stealing her lunchtime dessert; she calls an assembly, where she forces the boy to eat an entire giant chocolate cake. The boy succeeds, which frustrates Trunchbull.

The tyrannical woman hates Matilda on sight. When the girl’s pal, Lavender, sneaks a newt into Trunchbull’s water glass, the startled headmistress accuses Matilda of the deed. Furious, Matilda’s eyes somehow send energy toward the glass and tip it over, newt and all, onto Trunchbull.

Matilda confesses to Miss Honey that she made the glass fall; to prove it, she concentrates and makes the glass tip over again. Amazed, Miss Honey agrees to work secretly with Matilda to understand her new power.

They walk to the teacher’s tiny countryside cottage , which has no running water and no furniture. Miss Honey explains that when she was a little girl named Jenny, her mother died young, and her father, Magnus, brought in Jenny’s aunt Agatha to help raise the child at Jenny and Magnus’s beautiful house. The aunt, though, was cruel; she murdered Jenny’s father and framed it as suicide, then enslaved the girl for housework. Jenny later attended a nearby teacher’s college, and she got hired at Crunchem Hall, but the aunt still forced her to sign over her salary. Miss Honey escaped by moving to the cottage, which the owner rents to her for pennies a week. Her aunt Agatha is Headmistress Trunchbull, who still lives in Jenny’s old house as though it is rightfully hers; she forged the deed.

Matilda decides to help Miss Honey. Each day after school for a week, she practices making one of her father’s cigars levitate and move about. At school, when Trunchbull teaches Miss Honey’s Thursday class, Matilda telekinetically makes a piece of chalk write on the board, saying that it’s Magnus, who has come back to warn Agatha to give Jenny her house and salary and leave town—or he’ll get her like she got him. Trunchbull faints and must be carried to the sick-room.

The next day, Trunchbull’s assistant, Mr. Trilby, goes to Trunchbull’s house to find it unlocked. He enters to see that everything is in place except that it is vacant. Miss Honey then gets a letter from a law firm that says her father’s will has suddenly appeared. It gives the estate to her, including the family house where Trunchbull lived.

Miss Honey moves into her old house. Matilda visits her every afternoon. Miss Honey gets the girl transferred to the top grade, where she’s an excellent student.

Matilda’s father gets into trouble with the law for his crooked business operations, and the Wormwoods pack hurriedly to escape to Spain. Matilda doesn’t want to go; she hurries with Miss Honey to her house, where the teacher offers to care for the girl while the rest of the Wormwoods escape. Harry and his wife shrug and accept the deal. They pile into a car with their son and drive away. Matilda jumps into Miss Honey’s arms, and they hug. 

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Friday 19 March 2010

Review: matilda.

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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Roald Dahl's Matilda . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Matilda: Introduction

Matilda: plot summary, matilda: detailed summary & analysis, matilda: themes, matilda: quotes, matilda: characters, matilda: symbols, matilda: theme wheel, brief biography of roald dahl.

Historical Context of Matilda

Other books related to matilda.

• Full Title: Matilda
• When Written: 1987
• Where Written: England
• When Published: 1988
• Literary Period: Postmodernism
• Genre: Children’s Novel; Fantasy
• Setting: An English village
• Climax: Matilda uses her secret power to make the Trunchbull believe that Miss Honey’s father’s ghost wants Mrs. Trunchbull to return the family home and fortune to Miss Honey.
• Antagonist: Mrs. Trunchbull and Matilda’s Parents
• Point of View: Third Person

Extra Credit for Matilda

Great Welshmen. Dahl and poet Dylan Thomas (whose poem “In Country Sleep” appears in Matilda ) are sometimes considered the best-known Welsh writers. Though the men never met, they were born only 40 miles and two years apart. Thomas died at age 39 (having already achieved fame and recognition for his poetry and radio work) not long after Dahl’s career took off, and Dahl developed a great love for Thomas’s poetry—one of Thomas’s poems was read at Dahl’s funeral.

Fixed It! Dahl wrote Matilda twice—and the first time, he wrote Matilda as the villain. He’s quoted in interviews as saying that he knew after finishing the first draft that he’d gotten Matilda wrong. The rewrite paid off: Matilda won the Federation of Children’s Book Group Award in 1988.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Kid genius gets revenge on mean adults in fun fantasy.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

Children will learn some quick facts (titles, auth

Intelligence can matter more than brutal power, ev

Miss Trunchbull abuses Miss Honey and her students

Miss Trunchbull throws children out of windows, pi

There's a lot of name-calling directed from adults

Parents need to know that Roald Dahl's Matilda is about a brilliant, magical little girl who's miserable at home with her nasty, clueless parents and oppressed at school by her mean headmistress, Miss Trunchbull. However, Matilda finds a loving, kindred spirit in her teacher, Miss Honey, who values her pupil…

Educational Value

Children will learn some quick facts (titles, author names, and some plot summaries) of great books that Matilda reads, including Burnett's The Secret Garden and Dickens' Great Expectations . They'll also learn what times tables are, and how to spell a few words, such as "what" and "difficulty."

Positive Messages

Intelligence can matter more than brutal power, even when power is wielded by a large adult over a small child.

Positive Role Models

Miss Trunchbull abuses Miss Honey and her students, and Matilda's relationship with her parents is one of mutual dislike. However, Miss Honey is a wonderfully warm and encouraging teacher. She's also very brave in her way, and she has the adult perspective to express how adult cruelty affects children. Matilda is a special young hero, avenging adult crimes with her marvelous brainpower. Of course, this is all in the context of Roald Dahl's fantastical imagination, so the physical abuse is cartoonish, and little children can't really do magic, yet there is much to admire in the genius of Matilda Wormwood.

Violence & Scariness

Miss Trunchbull throws children out of windows, picks them up and swings them around by their hair or ears, and locks a child in a tiny room with spikes protruding from the walls. She also has pushed a young girl's head underwater as punishment. Though no one is really injured in this fantastical novel, some sensitive youngsters may be upset by the Trunchbull's cruelty.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

There's a lot of name-calling directed from adults to kids, or between adults, including "stupid," "glob of glue," "ignorant little twit," "gangster," "useless bunch of midgets," and more.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Roald Dahl 's Matilda is about a brilliant, magical little girl who's miserable at home with her nasty, clueless parents and oppressed at school by her mean headmistress, Miss Trunchbull. However, Matilda finds a loving, kindred spirit in her teacher, Miss Honey, who values her pupil's amazing brain power. Miss Trunchbull inflicts mental cruelty and physical abuse on the students, including name-calling, tossing children out of windows, locking them in a closet lined with spiky nails, and spinning them around by their hair or ears. These exaggerated acts of malice are part of the fantasy, though, along with Matilda's magical mental tricks. This novel was made into a dark yet delightful 1996 movie , and it's available as an audiobook read beautifully by actress Kate Winslet .

Where to Read

Community reviews.

• Parents say (19)
• Kids say (77)

Based on 19 parent reviews

Kids are smarter than reviewers are giving them credit for...

Let's read matilda little girl has powers, what's the story.

MATILDA is the story of a little girl genius. By age 4, the title character has read all the books in the children's section of her local library, and moved on to Dickens, Austen, and Hemingway. She can also do advanced math in her head and has a sophisticated understanding of the world. Unfortunately her crooked car-dealer father and bingo-holic mother, TV addicts both, don't appreciate her at all. In fact, they "looked upon Matilda ... as nothing more than a scab." Matilda spends most of her time reading and the rest thinking up clever ways to punish them for their atrocious behavior, such as putting superglue into her father's hat brim, and swapping his hair tonic for peroxide. Things change when Matilda starts school. Crunchem Hall Primary School is run by the horrific Miss Trunchbull, "a gigantic holy terror, a fierce tyrannical monster who frightened the life out of pupils and teachers alike." At the same time, Matilda is taken under the wing of her perfectly sweet teacher, Miss Honey, who needs the little girl as much as the student needs her. Getting back at the Trunchbull will be much more difficult, and dangerous, than punishing her parents, so Matilda's magnificent mind starts developing even more unbelievable talents!

Is It Any Good?

This classic book has been delighting kids and their parents since 1988, appealing both to readers' imaginations and to their sense of justice. The good in Matilda are all good, and the wicked get their comeuppance at the hands of giddy, delighted children. Precocious readers, like Matilda, will recognize in this novel's villainous characters some of the same qualities that define the bad children in what is probably author Roald Dahl's most famous work, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory . Mean characters exhibit gluttony and greed, watch too much television, and cheat to get what they want. Good characters are lovable, smart, and triumphant. Matilda is a wonderful romp -- a great read-aloud for young children, and a mild challenge for middle graders to read themselves. Either way, it's tons of fun and immensely satisfying.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the idea of revenge in Matilda . Is it right for Matilda to play tricks on her parents and Miss Trunchbull?

Do you think any real person can do magical tricks like Matilda does?

If you had Matilda's powers to move things with your mind, how would you use them?

Book Details

• Author : Roald Dahl
• Illustrator : Quentin Blake
• Genre : Fantasy
• Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Friendship , Great Girl Role Models
• Book type : Fiction
• Publisher : Penguin Group
• Publication date : May 8, 2005
• Number of pages : 240
• Last updated : June 10, 2015

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• Children's Book Reviews

Matilda by Roald Dahl – Book Review

Matilda is the world’s most famous bookworm, no thanks to her ghastly parents.

Her father thinks she’s a little scab. Her mother spends all afternoon playing bingo.

And her headmistress, Miss Trunchbull?

She’s the worst of all.

She’s a big bully, who thinks all her pupils are rotten and locks them in the dreaded Chokey.

Despite these beastly grownups trying to push her down, Matilda is an extraordinary girl with a magical mind.

And she’s had enough.

So all the terrible adults had better watch out, because she’s going to teach them a lesson they’ll never forget!

As a child, I was a massive Roald Dahl fan and spent hours with my nose in his books. At school, we had to read his older children’s work on his life, Boy and Going Solo. However, over the years I have noticed that I never actually read a few of his work, namely Danny the Champion of the World, The Witches, and Matilda.

This wasn’t something I really thought about recently until I saw it on Sarah Cox’s book show as one of the guests ‘Bring Your Own Book’ and she made it sound so appealing that I ordered it right away and then read it in a day. Why, oh why, did I ever leave it so long.

The book is for any bookworms no matter your age, it is a book about a bookish child. A child who loves all the classics. It is also a book about nasty people and how through being very clever from reading this little five-and-a-half-year-old Matilda gets her revenge.

The book is truly amazing. It was a beautiful, fun, energetic read and I fell in love with the little girl and want to spare her from these brutes that call themselves adults, including her parents who dislike their own child.

The copy I bought was the 30th-anniversary copy, mainly as I love a hardback book and partly because I loved the cover and the colour – yes I am that easily pleased.

Within the book is artwork by Quentin Blake who illustrated I think all of Roald Dahl’s work. He has a way with his artwork that not only brings the story to life but makes you laugh and connect with the characters too.

Part of me is glad that I never this book as a child as I got to appreciate it as an adult and part of me thinks I missed out on such a fabulous book that would have made me constantly giggle and frown.

Overall, this is a book that still after all these years works in today’s society. It was great fun to read and this edition would make a wonderful gift too.

Book Reviewer – Stacey

Purchase online from:, amazon.co.uk – amazon.com – amazon.in – apple books – blackwells – bookshop.org – waterstones, about the author.

The son of Norwegian parents, Roald Dahl was born in Wales in 1916 and educated at Repton. He was a fighter pilot for the RAF during World War Two, and it was while writing about his experiences during this time that he started his career as an author.

His fabulously popular children’s books are read by children all over the world. Some of his better-known works include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr Fox, Matilda, The Witches, and The BFG.

He died in November 1990.

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I read this back when I was a kid. Great book.

Such a good book! I love the movie too.

I watched the movie, never read the book.

I love this curious child and this author – I love your thoughtful review

definitely one of my fav authors and books!!

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Historical Context

By roald dahl.

'Matilda' is one of Roald Dahl's most popular children's novels in the contemporary period. It was published in 1988 to great critical acclaim.

Article written by Neesha Thunga K

B.A. in English Literature, and M.A. in English Language and Literature.

‘ Matilda ‘ has remained an evergreen phenomenon, with a film adaptation being released in 1996. ‘ Matilda ‘ has also been converted into an audiobook and a musical version by Netflix as well.

Publication History

‘ Matilda ‘ is Roald Dahl’s last long children’s book. According to Dahl’s daughter, Dahl wrote the book to preserve and promote the fascination for reading within children. This was when televisions were becoming popular in the United Kingdom, which is why Dahl wrote a book about a genius child, Matilda Wormwood, who loves reading. 

The story of ‘ Matilda ‘  was published on October 1, 1988, by Jonathan Cape in London. The novel is Roald Dahl’s 27th published book and originally had 232 pages and illustrations by Quentin Blake.

It rose to fame and broke sales records mere months after its publication . Within six months of its release, ‘ Matilda ‘ had sold more than half a million copies. 

After its publication, ‘ Matilda ‘ won the Children’s Book Award from the Federation of Children’s Book Groups in the United Kingdom. In 1998, ‘ Matilda ‘ was voted the “Nation’s Favourite Children’s Book” in a BBC Bookworm Poll. In 2012, ‘ Matilda ‘ made it to number 30 in a survey published by School Library Journal as an all-time children’s novel. Time Magazine also included ‘ Matilda ‘ in the 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time. Worldwide sales of the novel have reached almost 17 million and since 2016, ‘ Matilda ‘ has remained the best-selling novel by Roald Dahl.

The book has been released as an audiobook with the narration provided by the actress Kate Winslet and has been converted into a hugely successful film as well. The film, released in 1996, was directed by Danny DeVito and starred Mara Wilson. A musical version starring Alisha Weir as Matilda has been released in 2023.

Roald Dahl Personal Context

Roald Dahl wrote his first story for children, ‘ The Gremlins ,’ for Walt Disney In 1942. The story was not successful, so Dahl went back to writing mysterious and macabre stories for adults. However, Dahl revisited the world of children’s literature once again in 1961. Over his career, he wrote 19 children’s books , of which ‘ Matilda ‘ is the last long novel. 

The first children’s book he wrote was ‘ James and the Giant Peach ‘ which was published in 1961 to great acclaim. Dahl has commented that the origins of his children’s novels lie within the bedtime stories that he narrated to his children. Over the years, Dahl published several other children’s books including  ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ‘ in 1964, ‘ Fantastic Mr. Fox’  in 1970, and  ‘The BFG ‘ in 1982.

‘ Matilda ‘ was admittedly extremely difficult for Roald Dahl to write. The original version of the story featured a villainous Matilda who was wicked and used her powers for evil. However, Dahl decided that the story was not right, and he rewrote the entire novel . Dahl recounts this in a letter written to his daughter:

The reason I haven’t written you for a long time is that I have been giving every moment to getting a new children’s book finished. And now at last I have finished it, and I know jolly well that I am going to have to spend the next three months rewriting the second half. The first half is great, about a small girl who can move things with her eyes and about a terrible headmistress who lifts small children up by their hair and hangs them out of upstairs windows by one ear. But I’ve got now to think of a really decent second half. The present one will all be scrapped. Three months work gone out the window, but that’s the way it is.

Dahl died shortly after the publication of  ‘Matilda’  in 1990. 

Real-Life Inspirations

Matilda’s father, Mr. Wormwood, was inspired by a real-life character from the home village of Roald Dahl, which was an English village called Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire. The library that Matilda visits between the ages of 4 and 5 was also inspired by the library in Great Missenden in England.

It has been speculated that Roald Dahl’s grandchildren were the inspiration behind Matilda. However, this has not been confirmed by the author or his family.

Political and Cultural Influences

Although ‘ Matilda ‘ is a light-hearted children’s novel, its plot has been influenced by the general political and cultural climate of the 1980s. Television was an established form of entertainment by the time ‘ Matilda ‘ was published, although Roald Dahl depicts it as a form of evil in the novel.

It was during the 1980s that the second-wave feminist movement brought about several changes as well. This is reflected within the novel in several ways. For instance, the female protagonist is extremely independent and can take care of herself without the help of her parents, even at a young age. The feminist movement is also alluded to when Matilda and Miss Jennifer Honey discuss the fact that Miss Honey would be more independent if she was able to gain control over her income. 

Miss Trunchbull, the mean headmistress of Crunchem, speaks regretfully about the recent ban on corporal punishment for children. This reflects the ban on corporal punishment in English public schools in the United Kingdom that was effected in the year 1986. 

Dahl also refers to the ‘ Star Wars’  franchise by mentioning stormtroopers in the novel. 

Literary Context

Roald Dahl was greatly influenced by Lewis Carroll’s ‘ Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’  and ‘ Through the Looking Glass ‘. His children’s literature was also influenced by Norwegian folk and fairy tales, which he heard from his mother, who was a Norwegian immigrant.  ‘

‘ Matilda’  also alludes to several popular authors and their works, such as ‘ Great Expectations ‘ and  ‘Nicholas Nickleby’  by Charles Dickens, ‘ Tess of the d’Urbervilles ‘ by Thomas Hardy,  ‘The Old Man and the Sea’  by Ernest Hemingway,  ‘The Grapes of Wrath’  by John Steinbeck, ‘ The Sound and the Fury’  by William Faulkner,  ‘Animal Farm’  by George Orwell,  ‘Secret Garden’  by Frances Hodgson Burnett,  ‘The Good Companions ‘ by J.B Priestley, ‘ Mary Webb Kim’  by Rudyard Kipling and so on. These books transform the tiny girl, Matilda, into new worlds, all from a little room in the public library.

Is ‘ Matilda ‘ a real story?

No, ‘ Matilda ‘ is not a real story. It is a fictitious story written by Roald Dahl about a young, genius girl with magical powers.

Why is ‘ Matilda ‘ a banned book?

Some libraries and school administrators find that the contents of Matilda can be quite harmful to children. This is because they believe that the representation of Matilda’s neglectful and abusive parents, as well as the representation of the abusive Miss Trunchbull, the principal of the school, can be damaging.

What age is ‘ Matilda ‘ suitable for?

‘ Matilda ‘ by Roald Dahl is suitable for children ages 6 and up. Younger children might find it difficult to follow the events of the story. They may also get frightened by the mean and abusive adults in the story.

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About Neesha Thunga K

Neesha, born to a family of avid readers, has devoted several years to teaching English and writing for various organizations, making an impact on the literary community.

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Matilda Paperback – Illustrated, August 16, 2007

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Print length 240 pages
• Language English
• Grade level 3 - 7
• Lexile measure 840L
• Dimensions 7.24 x 5.42 x 0.63 inches
• Publisher Viking Books for Young Readers
• Publication date August 16, 2007
• ISBN-10 0142410373
• ISBN-13 978-0142410370
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved..

The Trunchbull let out a yell. . .

The Trunchbull lifted the water-jug and poured some water into her glass. And suddenly, with the water, out came the long slimy newt straight into the glass, plop!

The Trunchbull let out a yell and leapt off her chair as though a firecracker had gone off underneath her.

She stared at the creature twisting and wriggling in the glass. The fires of fury and hatred were smouldering in the Trunchbull’s small black eyes.

“Matilda!” she barked. “Stand up!”

“Who, me?” Matilda said. “What have I done?”

“Stand up, you disgusting little cockroach! You filthy little maggot! You are a vile, repellent, malicious little brute!” The Trunchbull was shouting. “You are not fit to be in this school! You ought to be behind bars, that’s where you ought to be! I shall have the prefects chase you down the corridor and out of the front-door with hockey-sticks!”

The Trunchbull was in such a rage that her face had taken on a boiled colour and little flecks of froth were gathering at the corners of her mouth. But Matilda was also beginning to see red. She had had absolutely nothing to do with the beastly creature in the glass. By golly, she thought, that rotten Trunchbull isn’t going to pin this one on me!

Puffin Books by Roald Dahl

Boy: Tales of Childhood

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

Danny the Champion of the World

Dirty Beasts

The Enormous Crocodile

Fantastic Mr. Fox

George’s Marvelous Medicine

The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me

James and the Giant Peach

The Magic Finger

The Minpins

Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes

The Vicar of Nibbleswicke

The Witches

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

Roald   Dahl

illustrated by Quentin Blake

PUFFIN BOOKS

For Michael and Lucy

The Reader of Books

Mr Wormwood, the Great Car Dealer

The Hat and the Superglue

The Platinum-Blond Man

The Trunchbull

The Parents

Throwing the Hammer

Bruce Bogtrotter and the Cake

The Weekly Test

The First Miracle

The Second Miracle

Miss Honey’s Cottage

Miss Honey’s Story

The Practice

The Third Miracle

It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.

Some parents go further. They become so blinded by adoration they manage to convince themselves their child has qualities of genius.

Well, there is nothing very wrong with all this. It’s the way of the world. It is only when the parents begin telling us about the brilliance of their own revolting offspring, that we start shouting, “Bring us a basin! We’re going to be sick!”

School teachers suffer a good deal from having to listen to this sort of twaddle from proud parents, but they usually get their own back when the time comes to write the end-of-term reports. If I were a teacher I would cook up some real scorchers for the children of doting parents. “Your son Maximilian”, I would write, “is a total wash-out. I hope you have a family business you can push him into when he leaves school because he sure as heck won’t get a job anywhere else.” Or if I were feeling lyrical that day, I might write, “It is a curious truth that grasshoppers have their hearing-organs in the sides of the abdomen. Your daughter Vanessa, judging by what she’s learnt this term, has no hearing-organs at all.”

I might even delve deeper into natural history and say, “The periodical cicada spends six years as a grub underground, and no more than six days as a free creature of sunlight and air. Your son Wilfred has spent six years as a grub in this school and we are still waiting for him to emerge from the chrysalis.” A particularly poisonous little girl might sting me into saying, “Fiona has the same glacial beauty as an iceberg, but unlike the iceberg she has absolutely nothing below the surface.” I think I might enjoy writing end-of-term reports for the stinkers in my class. But enough of that. We have to get on.

Occasionally one comes across parents who take the opposite line, who show no interest at all in their children, and these of course are far worse than the doting ones. Mr and Mrs Wormwood were two such parents. They had a son called Michael and a daughter called Matilda, and the parents looked upon Matilda in particular as nothing more than a scab. A scab is something you have to put up with until the time comes when you can pick it off and flick it away. Mr and Mrs Wormwood looked forward enormously to the time when they could pick their little daughter off and flick her away, preferably into the next county or even further than that.

It is bad enough when parents treat ordinary children as though they were scabs and bunions, but it becomes somehow a lot worse when the child in question is extra ordinary, and by that I mean sensitive and brilliant. Matilda was both of these things, but above all she was brilliant. Her mind was so nimble and she was so quick to learn that her ability should have been obvious even to the most half-witted of parents. But Mr and Mrs Wormwood were both so gormless and so wrapped up in their own silly little lives that they failed to notice anything unusual about their daughter. To tell the truth, I doubt they would have noticed had she crawled into the house with a broken leg.

Matilda’s brother Michael was a perfectly normal boy, but the sister, as I said, was something to make your eyes pop. By the age of one and a half her speech was perfect and she knew as many words as most grown-ups. The parents, instead of applauding her, called her a noisy chatterbox and told her sharply that small girls should be seen and not heard.

By the time she was three , Matilda had taught herself to read by studying newspapers and magazines that lay around the house. At the age of four , she could read fast and well and she naturally began hankering after books. The only book in the whole of this enlightened household was something called Easy Cooking belonging to her mother, and when she had read this from cover to cover and had learnt all the recipes by heart, she decided she wanted something more interesting.

“Daddy,” she said, “do you think you could buy me a book?”

“A book ?” he said. “What d’you want a flaming book for?”

“To read, Daddy.”

“What’s wrong with the telly, for heaven’s sake? We’ve got a lovely telly with a twelve-inch screen and now you come asking for a book! You’re getting spoiled, my girl!”

Nearly every weekday afternoon Matilda was left alone in the house. Her brother (five years older than her) went to school. Her father went to work and her mother went out playing bingo in a town eight miles away. Mrs Wormwood was hooked on bingo and played it five afternoons a week. On the afternoon of the day when her father had refused to buy her a book, Matilda set out all by herself to walk to the public library in the village. When she arrived, she introduced herself to the librarian, Mrs Phelps. She asked if she might sit awhile and read a book. Mrs Phelps, slightly taken aback at the arrival of such a tiny girl unaccompanied by a parent, nevertheless told her she was very welcome.

“Where are the children’s books please?” Matilda asked.

“They’re over there on those lower shelves,” Mrs Phelps told her. “Would you like me to help you find a nice one with lots of pictures in it?”

“No, thank you,” Matilda said. “I’m sure I can manage.”

From then on, every afternoon, as soon as her mother had left for bingo, Matilda would toddle down to the library. The walk took only ten minutes and this allowed her two glorious hours sitting quietly by herself in a cosy corner devouring one book after another. When she had read every single children’s book in the place, she started wandering round in search of something else.

Mrs Phelps, who had been watching her with fascination for the past few weeks, now got up from her desk and went over to her. “Can I help you, Matilda?” she asked.

“I’m wondering what to read next,” Matilda said. “I’ve finished all the children’s books.”

“You mean you’ve looked at the pictures?”

“Yes, but I’ve read the books as well.”

Mrs Phelps looked down at Matilda from her great height and Matilda looked right back up at her.

“I thought some were very poor,” Matilda said, “but others were lovely. I liked The Secret Garden best of all. It was full of mystery. The mystery of the room behind the closed door and the mystery of the garden behind the big wall.”

Mrs Phelps was stunned. “Exactly how old are you, Matilda?” she asked.

“Four years and three months,” Matilda said.

Mrs Phelps was more stunned than ever, but she had the sense not to show it. “What sort of a book would you like to read next?” she asked.

Matilda said, “I would like a really good one that grown-ups read. A famous one. I don’t know any names.”

Mrs Phelps looked along the shelves, taking her time. She didn’t quite know what to bring out. How, she asked herself, does one choose a famous grown-up book for a four-year-old girl? Her first thought was to pick a young teenager’s romance of the kind that is written for fifteen-year-old schoolgirls, but for some reason she found herself instinctively walking past that particular shelf.

“Try this,” she said at last. “It’s very famous and very good. If it’s too long for you, just let me know and I’ll find something shorter and a bit easier.”

“Great Expectations,” Matilda read, “by Charles Dickens. I’d love to try it.”

I must be mad, Mrs Phelps told herself, but to Matilda she said, “Of course you may try it.”

Over the next few afternoons Mrs Phelps could hardly take her eyes from the small girl sitting for hour after hour in the big armchair at the far end of the room with the book on her lap. It was necessary to rest it on the lap because it was too heavy for her to hold up, which meant she had to sit leaning forward in order to read. And a strange sight it was, this tiny dark-haired person sitting there with her feet nowhere near touching the floor, totally absorbed in the wonderful adventures of Pip and old Miss Havisham and her cobwebbed house and by the spell of magic that Dickens the great story-teller had woven with his words. The only movement from the reader was the lifting of the hand every now and then to turn over a page, and Mrs Phelps always felt sad when the time came for her to cross the floor and say, “It’s ten to five, Matilda.”

During the first week of Matilda’s visits Mrs Phelps had said to her, “Does your mother walk you down here every day and then take you home?”

“My mother goes to Aylesbury every afternoon to play bingo,” Matilda had said. “She doesn’t know I come here.”

“But that’s surely not right,” Mrs Phelps said. “I think you’d better ask her.”

“I’d rather not,” Matilda said. “She doesn’t encourage reading books. Nor does my father.”

“But what do they expect you to do every afternoon in an empty house?”

“Just mooch around and watch the telly.”

“She doesn’t really care what I do,” Matilda said a little sadly.

Mrs Phelps was concerned about the child’s safety on the walk through the fairly busy village High Street and the crossing of the road, but she decided not to interfere.

Within a week, Matilda had finished Great Expectations which in that edition contained four hundred and eleven pages. “I loved it,” she said to Mrs Phelps. “Has Mr Dickens written any others?”

“A great number,” said the astounded Mrs Phelps. “Shall I choose you another?”

Over the next six months, under Mrs Phelps’s watchful and compassionate eye, Matilda read the following books:

Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Gone to Earth by Mary Webb

Kim by Rudyard Kipling

The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Good Companions by J. B. Priestley

Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

Animal Farm by George Orwell

It was a formidable list and by now Mrs Phelps was filled with wonder and excitement, but it was probably a good thing that she did not allow herself to be completely carried away by it all. Almost anyone else witnessing the achievements of this small child would have been tempted to make a great fuss and shout the news all over the village and beyond, but not so Mrs Phelps. She was someone who minded her own business and had long since discovered it was seldom worth while to interfere with other people’s children.

“Mr Hemingway says a lot of things I don’t understand,” Matilda said to her. “Especially about men and women. But I loved it all the same. The way he tells it I feel I am right there on the spot watching it all happen.”

“A fine writer will always make you feel that,” Mrs Phelps said. “And don’t worry about the bits you can’t understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.”

“I will, I will.”

“Did you know”, Mrs Phelps said, “that public libraries like this allow you to borrow books and take them home?”

“I didn’t know that,” Matilda said. “Could I do it?”

“Of course,” Mrs Phelps said. “When you have chosen the book you want, bring it to me so I can make a note of it and it’s yours for two weeks. You can take more than one if you wish.”

From then on, Matilda would visit the library only once a week in order to take out new books and return the old ones. Her own small bedroom now became her reading-room and there she would sit and read most afternoons, often with a mug of hot chocolate beside her. She was not quite tall enough to reach things around the kitchen, but she kept a small box in the outhouse which she brought in and stood on in order to get whatever she wanted. Mostly it was hot chocolate she made, warming the milk in a saucepan on the stove before mixing it. Occasionally she made Bovril or Ovaltine. It was pleasant to take a hot drink up to her room and have it beside her as she sat in her silent room reading in the empty house in the afternoons. The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.

Matilda’s parents owned quite a nice house with three bedrooms upstairs, while on the ground floor there was a dining-room and a living-room and a kitchen. Her father was a dealer in second-hand cars and it seemed he did pretty well at it.

“Sawdust”, he would say proudly, “is one of the great secrets of my success. And it costs me nothing. I get it free from the sawmill.”

“What do you use it for?” Matilda asked him.

“Ha!” the father said. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“I don’t see how sawdust can help you to sell second-hand cars, daddy.”

“That’s because you’re an ignorant little twit,” the father said. His speech was never very delicate but Matilda was used to it. She also knew that he liked to boast and she would egg him on shamelessly.

“You must be very clever to find a use for something that costs nothing,” she said. “I wish I could do it.”

“You couldn’t,” the father said. “You’re too stupid. But I don’t mind telling young Mike here about it seeing he’ll be joining me in the business one day.” Ignoring Matilda, he turned to his son and said, “I’m always glad to buy a car when some fool has been crashing the gears so badly they’re all worn out and rattle like mad. I get it cheap. Then all I do is mix a lot of sawdust with the oil in the gear-box and it runs as sweet as a nut.”

“How long will it run like that before it starts rattling again?” Matilda asked him.

“Long enough for the buyer to get a good distance away,” the father said, grinning. “About a hundred miles.”

“But that’s dishonest, daddy,” Matilda said. “It’s cheating.”

“No one ever got rich being honest,” the father said. “Customers are there to be diddled.”

Mr Wormwood was a small ratty-looking man whose front teeth stuck out underneath a thin ratty moustache. He liked to wear jackets with large brightly-coloured checks and he sported ties that were usually yellow or pale green. “Now take mileage for instance,” he went on. “Anyone who’s buying a second-hand car, the first thing he wants to know is how many miles it’s done. Right?”

“Right,” the son said.

“So I buy an old dump that’s got about a hundred and fifty thousand miles on the clock. I get it cheap. But no one’s going to buy it with a mileage like that, are they? And these days you can’t just take the speedometer out and fiddle the numbers back like you used to ten years ago. They’ve fixed it so it’s impossible to tamper with it unless you’re a ruddy watchmaker or something. So what do I do? I use my brains, laddie, that’s what I do.”

“How?” young Michael asked, fascinated. He seemed to have inherited his father’s love of crookery.

“I sit down and say to myself, how can I convert a mileage reading of one hundred and fifty thousand into only ten thousand without taking the speedometer to pieces? Well, if I were to run the car backwards for long enough then obviously that would do it. The numbers would click backwards, wouldn’t they? But who’s going to drive a flaming car in reverse for thousands and thousands of miles? You couldn’t do it!”

“Of course you couldn’t,” young Michael said.

“So I scratch my head,” the father said. “I use my brains. When you’ve been given a fine brain like I have, you’ve got to use it. And all of a sudden, the answer hits me. I tell you, I felt exactly like that other brilliant fellow must have felt when he discovered penicillin. ‘Eureka!’ I cried. ‘I’ve got it!’”

“What did you do, dad?” the son asked him.

“The speedometer”, Mr Wormwood said, “is run off a cable that is coupled up to one of the front wheels. So first I disconnect the cable where it joins the front wheel. Next, I get one of those high-speed electric drills and I couple that up to the end of the cable in such a way that when the drill turns, it turns the cable backwards. You got me so far? You following me?”

“Yes, daddy,” young Michael said.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Viking Books for Young Readers; Reprint edition (August 16, 2007)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0142410373
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0142410370
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 6 - 10 years, from customers
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 840L
• Grade level ‏ : ‎ 3 - 7
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.8 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.24 x 5.42 x 0.63 inches
• #83 in Children's Classics
• #96 in Children's Fantasy & Magic Books
• #96 in Children's Humor

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Roald Dahl Matilda with amazing artwork

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About the authors

Quentin blake.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

The son of Norwegian parents, Roald Dahl was born in Wales in 1916 and educated at Repton. He was a fighter pilot for the RAF during World War Two, and it was while writing about his experiences during this time that he started his career as an author.

His fabulously popular children's books are read by children all over the world. Some of his better-known works include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr Fox, Matilda, The Witches, and The BFG.

He died in November 1990.

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