Excerpt from The BFG

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I’ve finished a few books in the past week, including one by a favourite author of mine, Mary Higgins Clark, but the one I had to highlight today was Roald Dahl’s The BFG. BFG, for those of you who don’t know, stands for Big Friendly Giant. It has grown in popularity since being made into a movie by Steven Spielberg. This is such a fun read, filled with lots of scrumdiddlyumptious words!

While it is a light, funny children’s book, it is packed with themes of prejudice based on appearance or race, poverty and privilege, and learning differences or disabilities. As Madeleine L’Engle said: “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”

‘Words’, he said, ‘is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me all my life. So you must simply try to be patient and stop squibbling. As I am telling you before, I know exactly what words I am wanting to say, but somehow or other they is always getting squiff-squiddled around.’

Roald Dahl, The BFG

Here is a fascinating article on Roald Dahl and how many of the odd words in the BFG and other books might have been inspired by his wife’s language after she suffered a stroke.

When Sophie is snatched from her bed in the middle of the night by a giant with a stride as long as a tennis court she is sure she’s going to be eaten for breakfast. But luckily for Sophie, the BFG is far more jumbly than his disgusting neighbours, whose favourite pastime is guzzling up whoppsy-whiffling human beans. Sophie is determined to stop all this, and so she and the BFG cook up an ingenious plan to rid of the world of the Bloodbottler, the Fleshlumpeater and all their rotsome friends forever.

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4 thoughts on “Excerpt from The BFG”

    1. I could see how it could be incredibly annoying to some. For me, Roald Dahl makes it work where others could not. It has a real rhythm and flow to it. But some people wouldn’t last past the first page.

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