Yipppeeeeee!

It's Roald Dahl Day!

The author of titles such as The BFG, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach and Matilda is famous for his fun and fascinating characters. When asked what he does to create an interesting character, he replied, "...it is no good to have people who are ordinary, they are not going to be of interest to your readers at all. I find that the only way to make my characters interesting is to exaggerate their good or bad qualities. So if a person is nasty or bad or cruel, you make the very nasty or bad or cruel. If they are ugly then make them extremely ugly. That I think is fun and has an impact."

Dahl says, "I laugh at exactly the same jokes that children laugh at, stories have to be funny, fast paced, and it's got to be exciting." He wrote 21 books for children and over 50 stories for adults, his favorite color was yellow and he adored spiders. He hated going to the movies because his legs were so long that he found the seats to be uncomfortable.

Gobblefunk is a collection on unique words that Dahl made up when writing The BFG and contains 283 crazy words.

My personal favorites are The Witches and Matilda. What are yours?
By Michele, Children's Librarian