Matilda door Roald Dahl

Writer: Roald Dahl
Title: Matilda
Publisher: Puffin Books
Place: London
Year: Firts published by Jonathan Cape Ltd 1988 Published in Puffin Books 1989

2. I chose the book Matilda because I had seen the movie and I liked it very much. So it seemed nice to read the book.

3. Matilda is a 5 year-old child. She is really very smart. She started reading when she was two years old. At four years she had read all the children books from the library and she started with books like Nicolas Nikleby, Oliver Twist, and other books from Charles Dickens.

Matilda’s parents didn’t like her and and they hated reading books. They thought you should be interested in other things than books, things like television for instance. Matilda understood they didn’t like her. So Matilda started to punish them with some mischievous pranks to get their attention. She, for example, put super glue in her dad's hat brim so he couldn’t take it off. Another time Matilda borrowed a parrot and stuffed it upon the chimney where it made sounds likes a ghost. The family was very scared and ran out of the house.


When she was six years old, she went to school. She was very happy about it. Her teacher was Miss Honey. Miss Honey perceived immediately from the first day of class that Matilda was very smart. Miss Honey went to the headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, a very mean teacher, and told her that Matilda should be taken out of her class and placed immediately in the top class with the eleven-year-old children. Miss Trunchbull said “nonsense” and didn’t want to hear anything about it any more.

Miss Honey was determined to help Matilda. Matilda then discovered she had a special power; she could pick up things with her mind. Matilda wanted to tell Miss Honey about her special power and went to Miss Honey’s house. When she went there she was shocked over Miss Honey’s poverty. Miss Trunchbull gave her almost no salary. She found that Miss Honey was paying back her education to her. Matilda didn’t pay attention to her own problems. She only paid attention to the story of Miss Honey’s life. (Miss Honey has had a terrible childhood, because both of her parents died when she was very young. Her guardian was the terrible Miss Trunchbull, the sister of her mother who had made her youth awful.)

Matilda wanted to help Miss Honey and made a wonderful plan. She used her special powers. The plan succeeded and Miss Trunchbull was driven away.
Matilda’s father decided to emigrate to Spain with his family. Matilda wanted to stay with Miss Honey and live in her house. Her parents agreed.

4. Principal characters of the book:
Matilda: Is the biggest character in the book. She is six years old. She is sensitive and brilliant. Her mind is nimble and she is very quick to learn. She is a small girl with brown hair and brown eyes. She is a nice girl. She is very intelligent.
She is loving, she is searching for love and she seeks attention in a negative way.
She has perseverance and a good sense of humour.

Matilda becomes more and more self-confident. After the discovery of her special gift she becomes more and more convinced of her own capacities. She dares to show her love for Miss Honey, and she starts defending other people.
She’s becoming more and more of a strong person.

Miss Trunchbull: She is the headmistress of the school. She had once been a famous athlete and she still practises with children (she throws them through the air).
She had an obstinate chin, a cruel mouth and small arrogant eyes.

She is very mean!!! She has no heart and she enjoys unhappiness of other people. She’s never nice and has no nice feelings for any person in the world.
In short: she is a bad and unpleasant person.

Miss Trunchbull is the character of the bad person. Shedoesn't change. She is bad and stays bad. She’s only showing some fear in the end of the book.

5. The story is enacted in the present.
About five years, but the first four years are mentioned in the first chapter. Most of the story takes place when Matilda, the principal character, is 6 years old.

6. The story is enacted in small town close to London.

7. The writer tells the story.

8. Theme of the book: love and loneliness and the victory over evil: the good person wins; the bad person looses.

9. A fantasy story.

10. Roald Dahl:
Born: 1916 in Llandoff (Wales)
Education: after boarding school he started working immediately
Work experience: worked in Africa for an oil company, was pilot in the navy and had been a writer since 1943
Family: Married twice and had 5 children. Lived in a village near London

Died: 1990


11. I think it’s a very nice book. I read it with a lot of pleasure.