Customer Reviews

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(33)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This is a funny, funny book! The story is not as good as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but this book is MUCH funnier.

I've read from some of the other reviewers' comments that their children didn't really like this book because the dialogue was over their heads. That may well be true--I read this book for the first time as a teenager. I read it out loud to my parents and all three of us were practically rolling on the floor!

I think this is a great book, for what it's worth.

This book is the second book about Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. This book is really different than the first one. This book has two journeys, instead of just one big one. This book also has chapters. The first book did not have chapters.

The main character is Charlie. He is a pre-teen boy. He helped Mr.Wonka many times. He is a very good person. I also think that he is going to be a good owner of the chocolate factory.

Charlie did not cause any of the problems that happened in the book, Mr.Wonka did. When Mr.Wonka went too high in the glass elevator, Charlie helped him press the right buttons in the elevator to come back down. Charlie did a lot of good things in the book and did a lot of saving.

Mr.Wonka also gave three of Charlie's grandparents too many Wonkavite pills that make people younger. The grandparents became 1 and 2 years old, and one grandmother was not even born yet and ended up minus land. Charlie helped to find her and bring her back. He also kept aliens from attacking a spacecraft.

I think that this is a very good book. It is strange, weird, and very interesting. It has some words that my dad could not even pronounce. I hope other kids will read it.

This was a really odd book. By the end of the first book, Charlie, his grandparents, his parents, and Mr Wonka are all in a glass elevator, shooting into the sky. From here, they go to outer space where a space hotel is opening and some American astronauts find them and assume they are enemy aliens. They, along with the infantile and incredibly stupid president of the United States contemplate blowing up the glass elevator and all inside to protect the soon-to-be occupied space hotel. With Wonka's gadgets, they manage to board the hotel, find real and very dangerous aliens, escape, and save the foolish Americans from being gobbled up...for the most part. When they return to the factory, Wonka offers a volatile youth potion to his grandparents, but only the selfish Josephina gets any...and all of it. She disappears as she becomes uninvented, Charlie and Wonka find her in the mysterious place where negatives live, and that's pretty much it. A series of non-sequitors, but funny nonetheless.

I'll readily admit that I didn't know that "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" was a book until Johnny Depp brought it to my attention, but that when I unearthed it, it was like finding buried treasure. Imagine my surprise while idling in the "Independent Reader" section of the bookstore, when I happened to come across a sequel to the classic original.

The sequel starts us at the point where Charlie and his family are about to move into Willy Wonka's factory (now Charlie's of course), and in usual Wonka style he picks them up, bed and all, in a glass elevator with amazing capabilities.

Due to an untimely misunderstanding and disagreement about falling several thousands of feet through a roof, the elevator and its unlikely astronauts are propelled into outer space, and find themselves in a weightless adventure saving the USA's commuter capsule from the clutches of the rampaging Vermicious Knids.

This takes up most of the book, but once they are safely returned to Casa Wonka, the elderly family members succumb to the same lack of common sense exhibited by the children of the previous book, and swiftly get themselves into a little trouble by not listening to the Wonka-man's mumblings.

Though not as entertaining or imaginative as the first, this one is full of humor and impossible but funny situations, and deserves 3.5 stars for weirdness alone.

Amanda Richards, August 23, 2005

I agree with some reviewers in that mostly all of what the book talks about is the glass elevator and Charlie's grandparents. It does state nothing about what Charlie did after all of this with his new chocolate factory, but I disagree with those who say that book was awful. I enjoyed reading it, despite the above complaints. It was very well written, and interesting to read, althought I would have liked to read about what Charlie did with his inheritance.

This book made me laugh a lot. To understand it better you should read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This time, Willie Wonka has taken Charlie's whole family into outer space in the great glass elevator. The grandparents made me laugh the most, especially when they yell at Mr. Wonka. Mr. Wonka is his craziest ever in this book! They have to save the space station from being squashed by aliens, though! Watch out for Willie Wonka in this hilarious book.

This book is funny, interesting, and a great book for all ages. I loved this book because it's fresh and funny, and Roald Dahl is a terrific writer. This was the first book I read by Roald Dahl, and you really don't need to ready any other Chocolate Factory books before enjoying this one.

The story goes like this: Charlie Bucket & his family, plus Willy Wonka are riding in a great glass elevator (just as the title implies,) and they somehow crash into outer space and land in this space hotel. While in the the hotel they come across these gruesome creatures. They cleverly escape from them and head back to the Chocolate Factory. While there Charlie's maternal and paternal grandparents take a pill created by Willy Wonka to make them younger (or older). The results are hilarious, but you have to read this book yourself to find out what happens!
P.S.: I loved the poems in the book!