Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator [Hardcover]

Roald Dahl (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 12, 1972

"A sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory finds the familiar characters orbiting through space in a magic glass elevator. It's all good fun and suspense."--Publishers Weekly.  

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Picking right up where Charlie and the Chocolate Factory left off, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator continues the adventures of Charlie Bucket, his family, and Willy Wonka, the eccentric candy maker. As the book begins, our heroes are shooting into the sky in a glass elevator, headed for destinations unknown. What follows is exactly the kind of high-spirited magical madness and mayhem we've all come to expect from Willy Wonka and his creator Roald Dahl. The American space race gets a send-up, as does the President, and Charlie's family gets a second chance at childhood. Throw in the Vermicious Knids, Gnoolies, and Minusland and we once again witness pure genius. (Ages 9 to 12)

Review

"Dahl''s phenomenal popularity among children speaks for his breathless storytelling charms."—Publishers Weekly

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers; 1st edition (August 12, 1972)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394824725
• ISBN-13: 978-0394824727
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (117 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #381,358 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Roald Dahl (1916-1990) was born in Llandaff, South Wales, and went to Repton School in England. His parents were Norwegian, so holidays were spent in Norway. As he explains in Boy, he turned down the idea of university in favor of a job that would take him to"a wonderful faraway place. In 1933 he joined the Shell Company, which sent him to Mombasa in East Africa. When World War II began in 1939 he became a fighter pilot and in 1942 was made assistant air attaché in Washington, where he started to write short stories. His first major success as a writer for children was in 1964. Thereafter his children's books brought him increasing popularity, and when he died children mourned the world over, particularly in Britain where he had lived for many years.The BFG is dedicated to the memory of Roald Dahls eldest daughter, Olivia, who died from measles when she was seven - the same age at which his sister had died (fron appendicitis) over forty years before. Quentin Blake, the first Children's Laureate of the United Kingdom, has illustrated most of Roald Dahl's children's books.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An interesting follow-up to a classic, August 25, 2001

By 

Simon (Brampton, ON) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (Paperback)

I remember in 2nd grade when our teacher read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to the class. It had such an effect on us that when we spotted Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator in the school library, we were all scrambling over each other to get it (I got it first). Looking back, while this book is still good, it lacks the central focus and charm that the original had. I did not expect the focus to be on the chocolate factory, since the title clearly says 'Great Glass Elevator'. However, the elevator only features in the first-half the book when everyone gets launched into space. This might have been a good idea for another book, but here it seems odd and rather dragged-out. With the second part of the book, the gang returns to Earth and mess around with Wonka-vite, an age-restoring miracle drug that gets badly abused. This part is much better, since we get to learn a bit more about the factory. Overall, I would have been much more pleased if Dahl had made the book longer and divided it into several seperate short stories. Together, the two seperate plots don't connect at all. Grandma Georgina also proved to be a bitter character and not sympathetic at all. Also, I hope that there is a version out there that still contains the original drawings in the book. Nothing against Quentin Blake, but the original sketches were classic.

23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing and Pointless, October 6, 2000

By 

E. Cohen (Beverly Hills, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (Paperback)

I've read the positive reviews for this book, and I just can't understand them. It's fairly obvious to me what happened -- in 1972, with the success of the movie version (1971) of the first book, the author probably answered the call for a sequel to the 1964 classic. Too bad. While the original is a timeless and charming (with a thoughtful message), this book is choppy, disjointed, and poorly written. Worse, there's just no point to it at all. Pages and pages are devoted to a rather silly saga of the elevator in space, which perhaps would have been marginally interesting in 1972, but badly dated at this point. That's the first half of the book. The rest of the book is wasted on the grandparents getting younger, then older, then younger again, by means of Mr. Wonka's concoctions. That really is all that it is about. Does that sound interesting to you? Again, no point at all. It just rambles on page after page as if Mr. Dahl's advance were based on the page count. Mercifully, the book ends. Nothing about the factory. Nothing about Charlie growing up. Nothing about Mr. Wonka teaching Charlie anything. I suggest you avoid it.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars There are three reasons why THIS Dahl novel was not made into a film---George, Georgina, and Josephine, September 18, 2006

By 

Jason Mierek "uniqueness is ubiquitous" (Urbana, IL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (Paperback)

After reading the delightful Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, this sequel was an absolute let-down. The novel begins with the great Glass Elevator breaking through the ceiling of Charlie's (formerly Wonka's) chocolate factory and rocketing into orbit around the Earth. While beyond the reaches of Earth's atmosphere, our heroes---Charlie, Grandpa Joe, and Mr. Wonka---must deal with the malleable and voracious Vermicious Knids (pronounced "K'Nids"), aliens which resemble unfrighteningly hostile figs or turds with eyes. Far worse than these beasties, though, are the insufferable old folks whose twenty-year stint in their shared bed has made them less than useless. Charlie, Joe, and Wonka, with no help from Charlie's folks or other grandparents, save themselves and a US spacecraft from the clutches of the Knids and return to the Chocolate Factory, where the old timers stupidly overdose on youth pills, returning them to infancy or beyond. Charlie and Wonka race around trying to help these ancient parasites, who respond to this assistance with the thanklessness the reader comes to expect from these oldsters. At the end of the novel, the geriatric brigade finally leaves the bed when they have a chance to meet the President.

In short, these three are the most tedious, spiteful, unredeemable characters I've come across in children's literature and I hoped that they would be eaten by the Knids or the Gnoolies or even the Oompa-Loompas as I read this book. As it is, they (unlike the awful kids in the Chocolate Factory) learn no lessons and persist in their curmudgeonly parasitism from the first page to the last. Their presence throughout the novel rendered it a chore, rather than a joy, to read.