Dahl, Roald

Before Charlie, before the Chocolate Factory, comes a story of invention and imagination . . .

Ever since he was a child, Willy Wonka had dreamed of making chocolate and sharing it with the world.

'I do actually happen to know how to make tortoises grow faster, if that's really what you want.'

Mr Hoppy really loves his neighbour Mrs Silver, and Mrs Silver really loves her tortoise, Alfie.

"For my lunch today", he said, I would like a nice JUICY little child." The Enormous Crocodile is planning what to have for his lunch.

He's the greediest croc in the whole river, and he wants to eat something juicy and delicious.

Mr Fox is a very clever fox - every evening he creeps down into the valley and helps himself to food from the nearby farms.

Chickens from Farmer Boggis, ducks and geese from Farmer Bunce, and turkeys from Farmer Bean.

Every Saturday morning the Gregg family goes off to shoot animals and birds. But the girl who lives next door hates hunting. Now it's made her so angry she's PUT THE MAGIC FINGER ON THEM ALL. And very strange things have begun to happen . . .

One child a week is fifty-two a year. Squish them and squiggle them and make them disappear.

BEWARE.

There are witches EVERYWHERE. Witches could be a cashier in a supermarket, a woman driving a fancy car, or even your own teacher.

"A stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is sparky"

Danny has the most marvellous and exciting father anyone ever had.

"Bigger and bigger grew the peach, bigger and bigger and BIGGER."

James Henry Trotter is about to go on the adventure of a lifetime.

James lives his awful Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, two of the meanest people you can imagine.

Mr Twit is a foul and smelly man who always has bits of cornflake and sardine in his beard.

Mrs Twit is scheming and sly and always thinking of the next horrible trick to play on her husband.

One dark, silvery moonlit night, Sophie is snatched from her bed by a giant!

Luckily it is the Big Friendly Giant (the BFG), who is no ordinary bone-crunching giant, but instead prefers snozzcumbers and frobscottle to children.

'Cruelty has a human heart . . .'

Even when we mean to be kind we can sometimes be cruel. We each have a streak of nastiness inside us. In these ten tales of cruelty master storyteller Roald Dahl explores how and why it is we make others suffer.