Customer Reviews

Bfg

5 star:		(296)
4 star:		(55)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Dahl's superb imagination has created a character, the BFG, who talks so whimsically and winsomely that I laughed out loud while reading this book. His child friend, Sophie, has no trouble understanding him, however, although she sometimes has to translate for less flexible or more pompous adults. The BFG's interactions with his fearsome peers demonstrate a high level of courage, particularly for a comic figure, and his nighttime activities indicate a delicacy of perception that few of us could attain. This is no two-dimensional character, but a real person that one would like to meet. The only fault I have to find with the book is that Sophie's strategy works too flawlessly, leaving no loose ends, no monsters at large who need to be chased. The relaxation of dramatic tension is complete. But then, I'm an adult; children who look under their beds each night would certainly prefer Dahl's ending. When I started reading this to my children, my first-grader, not an eager reader, could not bear to have me stop at the end of a chapter, and actually went on to read the next by himself. Parents, take note!

Young Sophie lies awake in her orphanage at the Witching Hour! She can't sleep and strange, macabre thoughts go through her head. The real fun begins, however, when she creeps to her window and sees a giant figure poking about in the 2nd floor windows across the street! My gosh, it's a GIANT!! The real fun begins when he kidnaps her from her bed and runs off to the land of giants.

In the hands of a less capable author than Dahl, this plotline would soon fizzle and become ho-hum humdrum. Say what you will, Dahl is a very, VERY capable author and this book is simply fabulous. While most giants are the people eating kind (with colorful names like Childchewer, Bloodbottler and Fleshlumpeater), Sophie is lucky to have been captured by the BFG-- Big Friendly Giant! He's no guzzler of people (known in Giantspeak as "human beans"-- giants don't go to school and their grammer is somewhat lacking) but is rather a gentle soul who has a special trade to ply in the human world. There's only two small problems: the BFG lives in the land of giants where the other louts would only be too glad to guzzle her right up, and there's no food other than a strange, disgusting vegetable called a snozzcumber (it tastes like frog skins and dead fish). So, while Sophie's happy not to have been eaten up, she's none to happy to find that there's always that threat of being discovered and noting for HER to eat. Besides, the other giants (much bigger than the BFG) are constantly running to other countries to guzzle human beans by the cartload (Chille beans are especially yummy, we're told...). Something MUST be done... but what? Maybe she should go tell the queen...

I came to Dahl's work late in life (that is, recently, not in childhood) and have slowly been making my way through his works. So far, "The BFG" ranks as his best work. It is continuously engaging, very funny, and keeps the reader engaged from page 1 all the way through to the end. Young or intermediate readers may have difficulty with some of the phonetically spellings and Dahl-inspired words like "snozzcumber", "whizzpopping" and the generally gobbled-up grammar of the giants' speech. Still, it is a fantastic, fast-paced story that will be enjoyed for years to come by young and old. Highly recommended.

This is an extraordinary book, and the reader is immediately drawn into the fascinating tale. It begins like this.........

Sophie is an orphan... One night, the moon was pouring in all it's brightness through her windows, casting light directly on her pillow....., unable to sleep, then, Sophie looks out of the window and.....that's when she finds herself caught by a giant called the BFG (the big Friendly Giant), but a giant so friendly and kind, that when other giants go searching for edible humans every night, he eats horrible cucumber kind of vegetables. Soon after Sophie and the BFG gets to be friends and goes to meet Queen Elizabeth for help. In the end, Sophie gets to live in a big palace with the BFG. I couldn't put this book down, so I read it in one day! It's terribly funny and interesting. It's the kind of book everyone will love reading.

I loved the book The BFG,

I chose it over cable T.V.

The words in the story just tickled me pink,

After a while it made me think,

I'm glad Roald Dahl wrote this story,

If you read it, you won't be sorry.

Action-packed, and full of laughter,

I was splitting my sides just right after.

Page after page, I was stuck in the book,

And if you ask me its better than it looks.

I'm happy I found The Big Friendly Giant,

To read it again, I wouldn't mind it!

By Lori Schneider

Grade 5

When I first saw the title of this book I got pretty excited. I have a friend with whom I often exchange cryptic lines of acronyms just to play with each other's minds (IHHIWBTFOTMOSLT). So when I saw "The BFG" I immediately started to speculated what the initials stood for: Bacon Fried Grease, Bunny's Favorite Goat, Blue Flavored Galoshes, and on and on. Well, it turns out BFG stands for Big Friendly Giant, which turns out to be somewhat ironic, because the BFG is actually the runt of all the giants we meeting in the telling of this story.

I learned a lot of very interesting things from this story, which is about an orphan girl named Sophie who is kidsnatched by the BFG and taken to the land of the giants. I learned that all of the giants, except the BFG, eat human beans, and than human beans from different places taste differently. I learned that giants only treat human beans the way human beans treat piggy-wigs. (I also learned a whole lot of new words I never knew before reading this book.) I learned that if you spend half your time sleeping, then you are really only half as old as you think you are. And I also learned where dreams come from, how important they can be, and that "Oliver Twist" was written by some talented cluckers called Dahl's Chickens.

Sophie is quite upset to hear that all the other giants are flushbunking off to England to swollomp a whole bunch of little chiddlers, she convinces the BFG to help her find a way to stop them. At this point a very important, very real person is enlisted to aid in the battle to save England from the giants. This was a very nice development because this person has been a character in another book that I really liked and it was really nice to see her again. Plus she was very helpful to Sophie and the BFG. In the end England is made safe once more and everybody lives most happily ever after.

I think you will enjoy this book and that you would enjoy pretty much any book written by Roald Dahl. I also think that when you have finished this book, you might let your children read it as well.

Pretend you are an orphan looking out your bedroom window in the middle of the night. You can't sleep. Suddenly you see a dark shadow moving towards you. It is huge! Then it grabs you! This is what happened to Sophie.

Sophie was just a normal orphan in a normal orphanage. But all that changed one night. Sophie couldn't sleep so she got up to look out the window. She looked down the street. There was a HUGE thing approaching. It turned and looked at Sophie! Then suddenly it reached its humongous hand and grabbed Sophie! He took her away to his cave.

You would think the giant would eat Sophie right? Wrong. Actually he is the nicest giant in Giant Country. He is the BFG (Big Friendly Giant.) But spoiling their fun are the human bean guzzlers: The Fleshlumpeater, the Childchewer and many more. They are horrible man-eating giants. They just must be stopped. So Sophie comes up with a plan. But will it work? Read the
book to find out.

I think The BFG is an hilarious book. Why is it so funny you ask? Well, the BFG has never been to school. So he doesn't speak properly. Some of his words are: Jumbly, phizzwizard, trogglehumper, snozzcumbers, frobscottle and many more. The BFG has a good plot with some twists and turns. My favorite chapter is Frobscottle and Whizzpoppers. It is really funny. Why? Well guess what a Whizzpopper is. (Hint: it is very rude and gassy.) Want I didn't like about this book is... well actually I loved all of it! It's just so hilariously funny, amazingly interesting and suspenseful. My favorite character is... the great, the amazing, the funny BFG!! I could read this book over and
over and over again!!!

The BFG is probably the best children's book I have ever read. I read this book when I was in elementary school and it is still one of my favorites. (I'm 21) Roald Dahl is one of the most creative authors I have ever had the pleasure of reading. He has the outlandish imagination of a child which allows him to really connect with the children he is writing for. There are very few books that I like to read more than once, but this one I have read at least fifty times.

Hi, I'm a ten-year-old girl. I read the book The BFG. It's a hilarious book. I liked the whole book. I liked the humor a lot. I would recommend this book to people that like to read humorous books. The book is about a little girl who got snatched from her bed by a giant named the BFG (Big Friendly Giant). You should really read it.

The BFG is a children's book written by Roald Dahl, who wrote such classics as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, and James and the Giant Peach, and illustrated by Quentin Blake. The book was published in 1982 and immediately became popular amongst children and adults. The book won the Federation of Children's Book Groups Award in 1982 (UK), and was named one of the "best books of the past 20 years" by the UK's Good Book Guide in 1997.

The story is about an orphan girl named Sophie who, one night when she can't sleep, looks out her window to see a creepy looking giant blowing something into the windows where other children sleep. When the giant looks her right in the eye, Sophie jumps to her bed, and hides under her blanket only to be snatched by the giant and taken away to his home. It turns out that the scary giant is none other than the BFG, or the Big Friendly Giant, the only giant amongst the frightening human-eating giants who is a good giant, who satisfies his hunger on weird vegetables known as the snozzcumbers and drinks a delicious fizzy drink known as the frobscottle, which has bubbles that travel downwards that makes the drinker break wind instead of burp. The other giants are named The Fleshlumpeater, The Bonecruncher, The Manhugger, The Childchewer, The Meatdripper, The Gizzardgulper, The Maidmasher, The Bloodbottler, and The Butcher Boy. When Sophie asks the BFG about what he does at night, he reveals his secret of blowing bottled dreams, nice dreams, into the windows of children's bedrooms, something the other giants have no knowledge of. When he catches a nightmare, he destroys it so that nobody will ever have to experience it. Sophie and the BFG become friends, and team up to rid the Giant Country and the world from the evil giants. So, the BFG mixes a dream showing what the giants do, which in turn becomes the worst nightmare the BFG had ever encountered, and takes it to Buckingham Palace and blows it into the Queen's bedroom, and leaves Sophie on the windowsill, for the dream includes the knowledge that she would be there when the Queen wakes up. When the Queen awakens after the frightful dream, she believes Sophie's story, speaks to the BFG, and works along with Sophie and the BFG to eliminate the child-eating giants.

The BFG is a character that the reader will automaticaly like. His unusual features, and nonsensical vocabulary, are both funny and very appealing to children as well as adults. Sophie is the young orphan girl who does an outstanding thing (saving the world from the evil giants), a theme that had been used by Dahl in other books like Matilda.

The book was very easy to read, and extremely amusing. Dahl's style and imaginative BFG dialogue tends to make children laugh and attempt to imitate. The story may also give the children a sense of fear or suspense (the description of the evil giants and what they do). Of course, the best thing about The BFG is the theme of good versus evil. It also shows that not just because someone might look unusual or scary means that that someone or thing is evil. In other words, you can't judge others by what they look like or how they look, but you can judge them only by their actions; a very useful lesson of life for children.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Some elements in the book may be offensive to some ethnic readers (Greeks, Turks amongst others).

Recommended

A

The Beautiful Book Review of the B.F.G.
The B.F.G. is the most wonderful story! It is one of the most treasured books that Roald Dahl has written. Some other books that he has written are Matilda, Boy, Tales of Childhood, and The Twits. The characters in The B.F.G. are Sophie, The B.F.G. (Big, Friendly, Giant), The Queen of England, The Bloodblotler, and The Fleshumpeater. The story takes place in Giant Country and England. The problem in the book is that the other mean giants are eating kids and the country is very worried, but then the big friendly giant steps up and save all the countries from all of the mean giants. He does not kill the big mean giants but he is going to trap them so they can't get out and harm any more children.
The B.F.G. is a terrific book that is funny and at times disturbing. One of the funny parts is when Sophie is snatched out of her bedroom and is thinking she is going to be dropped on to a pan sizzling with fat. What surprised Sophie was that she was not eaten, and the giant was very kind to her. One of the disturbing parts in The B.F.G. is when the nine other giants are galloping out of giant country and are going to other countries to gobble up kids for their dinner. This book is very exhilarating
Some readers or critics say that this book is good for all ages. However, for kids younger than eight, the book might be a bit disturbing. It might have a disturbing affect on kids 8 and younger. The sight of nine other half naked fifty foot giants might make them have nightmares. Others might think that the book has too much fantasy, but it is just fine to have kids 8-12 read it.

7/11/02
M.S.W.W.