We home educate 3 children. When I first started to read them Roald Dahl’s books, the kids were approximately 6 years and 4 year old twins. We also found there were script versions of most of Roald Dahl’s books, which meant we spent hours creating our own home movies to watch back in the years to come. Find out what our family thought about Roald Dahl, and which were our favourite 3 stories in this post.
Roald Dahl’s books were the first chapter books the kids allowed me to read to the end. I had never personally read them as a child. Even though I was academically successful, these books weren’t part of the school syllabus. I had, however, watched the old 1989 cartoon-version of The BFG. I had also watched the 1990 The Witches film, and the 1996 film of Matilda. I had enjoyed all of these films as a kid. I preferred reading to my own children than letting them watch screens. Hence I bought the books.
The Witches
The first ever chapter book I read the kids in full was The Witches. What a fantastic story to make up a high-pitched The Grand High Witch voice. Her foreign accent came through Roald Dahl’s writing quite easily into my voice. It really engaged my kids and they laughed a lot. I had to read so much in one day that I lost my voice because of it!
A brief synopsis of this book is that an orphan boy goes to live with his grandmother after his parents died. She tells him to beware of witches, and then one tries to lure him in from his garden tree. The grandmother and her grandson go to stay in a hotel, where the boy discovers there is a meeting being held there with all of the Witches. He and another boy get turned into a mouse by the witches. The mouse-boy and his grandmother now try to put an end to all of the witches!
Possible Themes To Consider Before Reading The Witches To Kids
In a similar way to so many of the current brilliant young children books at the moment, this book mentions the death of the boy’s parents. As with my worry about the dead parent story theme in Ed Clarke’s The Secret Dragon, Hannah Gold’s The Last Bear and Katherine Rundell’s Rooftoppers, I was a bit concerned if reference to parents having died would cause my kids alarm. I guess because these stories are talking about someone else’s parent, all of these amazing stories’ references to parental death doesn’t seem to be affecting my kids. But whilst talking about this again in a book review, I do wonder why so many children’s books need to have a parent or two having died?
As a side note, Amazon’s recommended reading age is for 7-10, so this is presumably due to some of the content potentially being a bit strong for 4 year olds and a 6 year old. However, my kids absolutely loved this story, and I am sure if any of the content wasn’t suitable for my kids I would have ‘er hem, where was I, ermmmm…’ skipped over those parts! Some of Roald Dahl’s language required me to edit or skip, as it was quite strong for my young kids.
Review Of The Witches Book As A Mother
There are film script versions of most of the Roald Dahl books. My kids threw themselves into making these films. They had a laugh making their first film together, The Witches. They thoroughly enjoyed the George’s Marvellous Medicine play book, where they made their own toxic concoction to cook on the stove. This made for a great opportunity for the kids to learn about making their own films, learning to play with acting for the screen, and watching themselves back on the TV.
As I already mentioned, I enjoyed doing a silly Grand High Witch voice throughout this. I am usually terrible at doing foreign accents but the way it was written helped me sound like a pretty impressive high-pitched German woman! My kids liked me doing this accent too.
Why My Kids Liked The Witches
My kids have been found stuck in Roald Dahl books many times over the past couple of years. They love his stories. They also enjoyed making their own films, and like to watch themselves and laugh at the films they made. The Witches was especially funny as we got those plaque reveal tablets which make your spit look blue. Perfect for this story, and it really got the kids into the character of making believable witches.
The BFG
A brief synopsis of this book is that a girl in an orphanage gets spotted by a friendly giant. He takes her to where he lives, with some bigger and scarier giants who like to eat humans. The BFG and the girl want to save more children’s lives from the brute giants. The BFG makes a dream for The Queen of England. The girl then is able to talk to The Queen of England and a plan is hatched to capture the other giants with the BFG’s help.
Possible Themes To Consider Before Reading The BFG To Kids
To be honest, this is quite a scary story when you think of the content.
As a side note, Amazon’s recommended reading age is for 8-12, so this is presumably due to some of the content potentially being a bit strong for 4 year olds and a 6 year old. However, my kids absolutely loved this story, regardless of the potentially unsuitable content. I guess their Mummy reading it to them filled them with comfort, since I would have been doing raised eyes or ‘what!’ sounds etc, so make them realise this was not a true story.
Review Of The BFG Book As A Mother
As mentioned above, there are film script versions of the BFG. My kids threw themselves into making these films. They had a laugh making The BFG, and used some toy characters to make the giant appear larger than the little girl. They naturally found suitable props, e.g. a violin case was the BFG’s dream-catching trumpet; a cucumber was the snozzcumber; they used a fancy dress crown to be the Queen.
Why My Kids Liked The BFG Book
My kids enjoyed this book. My oldest daughter, aged 6, even started drawing lots of giants in her artwork – the Bloodbottler, the BFG, usually with a little Sophie too for size comparison. I guess this was one of the most unbelievable stories which sparked excitement and fear at the same time. Although it was unbelievable, it was so well written, you almost believed it could have been true.
George’s Marvellous Medicine
A brief synopsis of this book is that a boy gets the opportunity to take care of his very demanding grandmother. He despises her, so mixes together a nasty concoction to make her a toxic medicine. She grows so big, exploding through the ceiling. They try to recreate the mixture, but then she shrinks to nothingness.
Possible Themes To Consider Before Reading George’s Marvellous Medicine To Kids
All of the Roald Dahl books are ‘out there’ books, with some strong language and sometimes rude behaviours. This story is very strong in content, with essentially poisoning an elderly grandparent. Fortunately it didn’t seem to affect my kids since they don’t have any blood grandmothers in their lives at the moment. Because of our life situation, it made it a comedic story for them.
It is worth noting that it can spark some science experimentation in the children. So it may be necessary to supervise this play closely and guide them about safety.
Review Of George’s Marvellous Medicine As A Mother
Along with the other Roald Dahl books, we bought the George’s Marvellous Medicine film script too. My kids threw themselves into it, including my son who had phased in and out of the other films. With this one, he desperately wanted to create the most toxic and disgusting mixture possible. I made sure they were clear that they were near to feed their chemical creation to anybody!
Why My Kids Liked George’s Marvellous Medicine Books
This was such a fun and crazy story for the children to enjoy. What child doesn’t want to experiment with concoctions in this way?! In fact, even part of me as an adult found it exciting to see what the results would produce. In case you wondered how ours turned out… here’s two of their attempts to create Grandmother’s medicine 😀
Other Roald Dahl Books
We have read all of Roald Dahl’s other books too, but the above stories of The BFG, George’s Marvellous Medicine and The Witches were our overall 3 best stories. They were all exciting to read aloud and the kids remained engaged until the end of the story.
Gentle Parent 