Matilda by Roald Dahl

Although he also wrote many stories for adults Roald Dahl is probably the most successful children's writer in the English language. He was born in 1916 in south Wales, Britain, but he was the son of Norwegian immigrants, he was a fighter pilot in the second world war and he flew  bomber planes in Libya, Greece and Spain, his plane crashed in the Libyan desert and he       suffered serious injuries. Fortunately, he abandoned the army and became a writer of short stories, for adults, at first, but in 1960 he began writing stories to entertain his own children, and became very famous. He died in 1990.

Among his books for children the most important are: Charlie and "the Chocolate factory", "The Witches", "James and the Giant Peach" and "Matilda". They have all been turned into films.

Matilda is about a little girl who is very, very clever and she can talk perfectly at the age of 2 and at 4 she has read all the   children's books in the  library, then she begins  reading books by Dickens,  Shakespeare... She is very  studious, but she has some  problems, her parents are  horrible and they are not interested in her daughter, they just want to watch TV and at school she has a very cruel headmistress named Mrs Trunchbull, luckily there is another teacher, Miss Honey who is nice and realizes Matilda's qualities.

Matilda is a very good example of Dahl's philosophy, Matilda's parents and headmistress are monsters in a position of power. Dahl often puts good against evil, bad, bad adults against innocent, clever children who always win in the end. Dahl's stories are very funny because the bad adults are comically bad, everything is very exaggerated. One day, for example, Mrs Trunchbull takes one child by the hair and throws her into a neighbouring field, Miss Honey is so poor that she only earns 1£ a week. Impossible things happen in normal situations. Dahl reverses normal behaviour, adults usually complain that their children watch too much TV and they don't read but in this story they complain because she studies.  Finally, Matilda will get magical powers....

This book became a successful film in 1996. 

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