The fantastic Mr. Dahl

Who can forgot the way Willy Wonka crooned "Pure imagination" as he sipped crunched off a piece of his buttercup? Who led me to believe in snozzberries, whangdoodles, and in the BFG?

I'm not sure if I would be an English teacher today if I didn't have those late night feasts, devouring James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and Danny the Champion of the World, under my dim book light. Roald Dahl's magic touch still lingers as I find myself as giddy as an 8 year old while rereading his books.

For me this is the manna of English. This is great literature: a book that can transport you to another world and transform your way of looking at the world. My students are reading a chapter from his autobiography, Boy, and some of them hate reading even if its by Roald Dahl (miserable twits!). So I made a part of the story into a script so that they can act out the story and actually enjoy it for all its worth. Even in this short anecdote of a father trying to discourage his son from eating black licorice bootlaces, Dahl reveals his knack for wonderfully descriptive writing.

Father: Every rat catcher in the country takes his rats to the Licorice Bootlace Factory, and the manager pays tuppence for each rat. Many a rat catcher has become a millionaire by selling his dead rats to the factory.

Thwaites: But how do they turn the rats into licorice?

Father: They wait until they’ve got ten thousand rats. Then they dump them all into a huge, shiny steel cauldron and boil them up for several hours. Two men stir the bubbling cauldron with long poles, and in the end they have a thick, steaming rat stew. After that, a cruncher is lowered into the cauldron to crunch the bones, and what’s left is a pulpy substance called rat mash.

Thwaites: Yes, but how do they turn that into licorice bootlaces, Daddy?

Father: (pauses to think for a few moments) The two men who were doing the stirring with the long poles now put on their Wellington boots and climb into the cauldron and shovel the hot rat mash out onto a concrete floor. Then they run a steamroller over it several times to flatten it out. What is left looks rather like a gigantic black pancake, and all they have to do after that is wait for it to cool and to harden so they can cut it up into strips to make the bootlaces. Don’t ever eat them. If you do, you’ll get ratitis.

Thwaites: What is ratitis, Daddy?

Father: All the rats that the rat catchers catch are poisoned with rat poison. It’s the rat poison that gives you ratitis.

Thwaites: Yes, but what happens to you when you catch it?

Father: Your teeth become very sharp and pointed. And a short, stumpy tail
grows out of your back just above your bottom. There is a no cure for ratitis. I
ought to know. I’m a doctor.

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