Customer Reviews

Matilda

5 star:		(315)
4 star:		(64)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Originally published in 1988, "Matilda" was one of the last books author Roald Dahl wrote before his death in 1990. Most authors as they age become more cynical and dour. Think of the final writings of Dickens or Twain and how bitter they seemed in their late years. Then look at "Matilda". Here we have a sweet charming little piece of literature about a girl that is both good and interesting. Creating characters that you identify intrinsically with is not only difficult but (in children's books) sometimes near impossible. Reading "Matilda", it becomes clear that Roald Dahl never lost his touch for creating wonderful original characters and situations.

The heroine of this little book also carries its name. Matilda is incredibly intelligent, even as a small child. Living with her boorish parents and oblivious brother, she teaches herself to read from the various magazine and newspapers lying about the house. Her parents are completely indifferent to their only daughter and it is only by playing small tricks on them when they've been particularly nasty that little Matilda is able to keep a hold on her sanity. By age five and a half Matilda has read all the children's books in the library and quite a few of the adult ones as well. On entering school for the first time, our protagonist comes face to face with a very worthy enemy. The Head Teacher, Miss Trunchbull, is the worst kind of dangerous violent adult. It is only through Matilda's cleverness that she is able to come to the aid of her teacher, Miss Honey, and save the school from the Trunchbull's insanity.

As I mentioned before, Matilda is just the nicest kid ever. Intelligent without ever becoming pig-headed. Nice without becomes precious. She's just a swell child all around. Through her, Dahl takes some mighty fine cracks as his fellow kiddie lit authors. I was especially fond of the portion in which Matilda points out that though C.S. Lewis and Tolkien are fine writers, "There aren't many funny bits". And as we all know, Dahl is the master of the funny bit for kids. This book is chock full of them too. It contains all the usual peculiar Dahl touches (like kids being swung out of the playground by their pigtails) as well as practical jokes and nasty adults. The Trunchbull is perhaps THE nastiest adult ever to grace the pages of the Dahl world. Definitely unhinged, she abuses the children around her, coming just shy of actual physical contact. It is amazing then that Dahl doesn't dispatch of her in a violent or crazy fashion. She merely...disappears. Likewise Matilda's parents get their comeuppance by merely fleeing the country to Spain. Dahl was quite soft in his old age, it seems.

Reading this book today I was struck by how much Lemony Snicket owes to Mr. Dahl. Not just the usual adults-are-nasty-cruel-and-possibly-batty take, but the narrative voice as well. It took me a couple minutes to realize that this was Dahl talking and not Mr. Handler. Illustrated by Quentin Blake, the book is perfectly complimented by the illustrators' insane imaginings and concoctions. The Blake/Dahl pairing is often inspired, and it works to its best advantage here. I can't imagine this book without Blake's particular little pointy nosed heroine gracing the pages. For those parents who either don't approve of Dahl or just don't "get" him, I think "Matilda" is the perfect story to win them over. You'd have to be pretty hard of heart not to love its little heroine and the troubles she gets into. A charming treat to be enjoyed for years to come.

I'm out of the country with my 6 years old daughter for a week. When we travel together we always bring enough reading stuff, and our main book this time is Matilda - a fantastic book about a fantastic girl. I have read all of the Roald Dahl books for my kids several time, Matilda has always been and still is my favorite :-)

Matilda is a small girl with extraordinary talents. Already when she is three years old she starts visiting the local library and reads all the books there, starting with the children's books, keeping on with the world classics. Matilda's parents are very neglective, and refuse to see any of Matilda's talents. But Matilda is a fighter and finds her own very creative and very funny ways to get revenge.

Matilda is a funny book, showing a girls fight for her individuality, in a typical RoaldDahlish way. I love it, and all my kids have loved it as well. My youngest daughter is only six, and should be a little too young for the book. But still the book works perfectly for her. The chapters are quite long, but none of us manage to stop after just one chapter. Being on holiday, we can sleep long in the mornings, and can read for a long time in the evenings.

An extra pluss with the book is all the fantastic recommandations of future books it gives us. Dahl has made a wonderful list of the books Matilda read at the library.

Britt Arnhild Lindland

I think Roald Dahl is the best children's author ever! I'm 20, and I still read his books. Matilda tells the story of a little girl genius. Matilda taught herself to read from the newspapers lying around her house when she was a baby and she practically exhausts the local library's collection before she even begins school. She is an extraordinary child, but she's not just smart. She has a daring vengeful streak... She gets excellent revenge on her father for horrid things he says to her. Once, he even tears up her library book. You really can't help but laugh and cheer for her when she gives the bad guys a dose of their own medicine!

Dahl's gift for inventing extraordinarily horrid characters is exercised beautifully in this story. Matilda's father is a cheating used car dealer, and her mother regularly leaves 4-year-old Matilda home alone all afternoon so that she can play Bingo in the next town. The Headmistress Trunchbull even throws a small girl across the playground by her pigtails! Matilda's parents ignore her, the Headmistress is a holy terror, and Matilda's only comfort is her kind teacher, Miss Honey. After the Headmistress, AKA the Trunchbull, does some particularly horrid things to the students and Miss Honey, Matilda uses her extraordinary brain to take back some of their own...

Like most of Dahl's books, there is an undeniable element of cruelty woven into this story-- but this is the best kind of cruelty! When the good guys win, like they always do in Dahl's books, kids cheer on the fall of the real evil.

Matilda is my favorite Roald Dahl book, but The BFG and The Witches are close runners-up. I highly recommend all of his books!

I read this book when I was 6, now 8 years later I still remember the content very well. A little girl who was a genius but his parents never discovered it, they never cared much about her at all. At school, Mrs Trunchbull, was an extremely mad and unresonable headmaster who threw school children up the air just for fun.

Although the environment Matilda grew up in wasn't nice at all, she met her class teacher(err..forgot her name), who appreciated her talent and gave sympathy to her situation.

Later, Matilda discovered that she had supernatural powers and used it to teach Mrs.Trunchbull a lesson, and the headmaster was nowhere to be seen again after she fleed from her house in a hurry. Matilda'a father, because of selling old cars dishonestly, had to escape from the country as well. Matilda offered to stay in her teacher's house and so they lived happily ever after.

I just love the stories told by Roald Dahl, his stories always fascinate me, his words are suitable for children and the stories are full of imagination.

The book Matilda has the characters Matilda, her brother, her mother, her father, Mrs. Honey, Mrs. Trunchbull, Lavender, and Amanda. Matilda is the main character. Her parents took her as a mistake. They didn't like her at all. In fact when they got home from the hospital, they forgot her in the car. But Matilda is very smart. She learned how to take care of herself when she was about 4 - 6 the way that people would take care of themselves in their early 30's. In the morning her parents would go off to work and leave her nothing but cold uncooked soup on the stove. She would dump that and make herself pancakes. Then she would take the long trip to the library to read some books. Her parents had miserable jobs. Her father sold cheap old cars that weren't worth what he charged them. Her mother went off and played bingo. Matilda's father finally sent her to school. The principal at the school was very mean. She put children in a closet called the chokei and there were nails sticking in it and she locked it so they couldn't get out. Since her parents were very mean to her at the end Matilda's teacher Mrs. Honey adopted her. They both lived very happily for the rest of their life's. This book takes place in the present and most events occur when Matilda is in school. She acquires almost the entire school as her friends, even the older kids. When she was in school Mrs. Trunchbull made a boy called Bruce Bogtrotter eat a whole cake in front of an assembly of kids. Matilda cheered him on the whole time. along with everyone else. All together this book is a very good book,. and very, very exciting.

One of the last novels written before Roald Dahl's death, "Matilda" reads almost like a goodbye, with a thank-you to all the authors that have touched Dahl during his lifetime - the text even includes a reading list of books recommended to Matilda - and through her, to the reader. And Matilda herself, despite being female, could very well be a reflection of Dahl himself as a child: a precocious bookworm with a fascination with words, people and places. As such, "Matilda" holds a special place in the canon of Dahl's literature for children, and Matilda herself is one of those shining characters that you simply wish was a real person and your friend. It is a rare thing indeed for an author to not only create a character who has practically no faults, and yet never becomes a goody-two-shoes or implausibly perfect, but to give her a remarkable gift (in this case, her hyper-intelligence) and make it seem less important than her goodness, her loyalty, her sense of justice and her love of learning.

Matilda Wormwood is born to two rather awful parents who have no interest whatsoever in their young daughter, instead pouring all their attention into their work, (for Mr Woodworm) bingo, (for Mrs Wormwood) and occasionally their first-born son Michael. However, they are mean-spirited enough to take umbridge at the sight of Matilda indulging her great love for reading. To get back at them (and to keep her own sanity) Matilda engages in a series of practical jokes every time her parents are beastly or dishonest - which happens on a rather regular basis.

But all of that changes when she starts school and Matilda meets the two most important women in her life: the lovely Miss Honey and the terrible Miss Trunchball. The gentle and timid Miss Jennifer Honey is Matilda's adored teacher, whereas Miss Trunchball is the Headmistress of Crunchem Hall Primary who terrifies student and teacher alike. Miss Trunchball may be a rather unfortunate stereotype of a butch, unattractive, athletic woman, but as an incarnation of psychotic feminine rage, she comes second only to Lewis Carroll's Queen of Hearts. More a force of nature than an actual person, she's sure to send a shudder down any child's spine - however bad your teacher is, you can be sure she's not *this* bad!

It soon becomes clear that the students of the school are waging a war against Miss Trunchball, one that Matilda is all-too-keen to become a part of when she realizes that there is a mysterious link between her beloved Miss Honey and the tyrannical Trunchball. And it just so happens that around this time, Matilda finds that she has a remarkable ability: to move things with her mind. Being a moralistic girl as well as an intelligent one, she soon realizes that she now has the perfect tool with which to restore Miss Honey to her former fortune and deliver Miss Trunchball her just desserts.

The text is full of allusions to other books and stories, making it a remarkably rich read for a children's book (and will hopefully get young readers interested in other books - as I'm sure was Dahl's intention) and of course includes plenty of Dahl's trademark love for the grotesque and macabre, components that have always made him controversial in the adult community, and beloved in the child's world. But even more in "Matilda", there is a sense of the spiritual and the sublime - Matilda's emerging powers seem to not only stem from her intelligence, but from her great spirit as well, particularly when she describes her powers as feeling like: "flying past the stars on silver wings." With justice served in the guise of a tiny five year old (captured perfectly in the illustrations by long-time Dahl collaborator Quentin Blake), and an ending that manages to be both happy and bittersweet, "Matilda" is a must for any children's bookshelf.

It's only fair that this book be mentioned in comparison to the Harry Potter books, since this book is similar in tone, character, and sheer genius. In fact, MATILDA is probably the predecessor to Harry Potter, and deserving of as much praise and admiration.

Matilda is a girl who doesn't jibe with her parents, is despised by the school principal, Ms. Trunchbowl, and has a wonderfully sweet teacher named Miss Honey. Oh, and Matilda just happens to have special powers. This book follows Matilda in her search for friendship, approval, and the key to her magical powers.

The tone in this book is whimsical and magical, with a huge helping of humor and outrageousness. The characters are strong and entertaining, and the story is engaging. This book is a must read for fans of Roald Dahl's other books, specifically CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, as well as fans of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Highly recommended!

Looking back on my twenty-three years, I remember the first time I was introduced to Dahl's writing. I was in the fifth grade, and our teacher was reading us "The Twits." From that day on I did my best to read all of his books. Matilda was always my favorite.
This book shows perfectly the differences in Dahl's writings when compared to others. Dahl was never afraid to create mean charecters that were exactly that. In Matilda we have a Headmistress that throws kids by their hair and locks them in a box that has broken glass and nail covered walls.
Don't worry parents. Dahl isn't out to scare your children. What I love about his writings is how Dahl creates a story to show how no matter how big the bully is, they can always be overcome by a small child filled with determination and intelligence.
I hope that every child has the ability to discover the world of Dahl. A world where it doesn't matter who you are, you can accomplish anything that you set your mind to. Where the unexplainable it explained. And where the life of an old english man touched the life of millions of children across the world.
The world needs more Roald Dahls. May his life live on through those he's impacted.

I read Matilda when I was living in England. I started to read it when a boy called June recommended it to me. I still read it these days.It's a story about a girl and her parents, who ignore her.

Matilda is an ingenious girl with quick learning ability. When her dishonest parents go out, she starts going to the library to read books. Matilda gradually gets smarter and smarter, but her parents still ignore her. Soon, her parents disaprove of Matilda because she's so different from the other members of the family, who are the kind of peaple that only sit infront of the TV.

When Matilda goes into school at the age of six, she meets a nice, kind quiet teacher called Miss Honey who gets convinced of the fact that Matilda is exceptionally smart, Matilda also meets a monsterous Headmaster who hates children, Ms Trunchbul.

Matilda gets to like Miss Honey and finally gets to go to her house and listens to Miss Honey's tragic story of the past. By that time, Matilda has developed psycyic powers to move things using her eyes, and she decides to pay back her parents for all the things they've done to her, she also decides to pay back Miss Trunchbul for being very spiteful to the children at school.

In the end Matilda gets adopted by Miss Honey and spends a wonderful life.

This is a very interesting and exciting book. It talks about a young girl who would rather read a book and go to school than to stay home all day and look at televisioon. This girl has a very tuff life at first, until she finds a person, her teacher, who's life isn't very much different than hers. Matilda's parents are people who love to watch telivison all day long and they only care about money. Her parents really don't appreciate her that much. They wanted her to be exactly like them. She has a brother who takes after her parents. Her teacher believes that Matilda is a very young educated girl for a child who is in a way neglected. Her teacher knows exactly what Matilda is going through, since she lost her parents at a young age and had to live with her wicked aunt. This book teaches us that no matter how tuff life can be you can always find happiness one way or another. I think that this book is a very good book. It is also very exciting. I give this book five stars. The reason I give this book five stars was because I never really thought that a kid could love to read and go to school. This book taught me to appreciate things more. For example, I am very lucky to have parents that would allow me to read and would allow me to go to school. This book really influenced me and I'm sure that it would influence a lot of young children out there.