Matilda by Roald Dahl

ISBN: 0142402532
I purchased this book.

Matilda is the classic story of an incredible smart little girl who develops telekinesis and uses it, not to improve her own horrible home life, but to help others. Don’t know it? Perhaps you should.

The differences between the book and movie versions are minute, but present. The movie is more Americanized and the story is smoother, but it lacks one of the books very strong points—a higher level of vocabulary.

In Matilda Dahl (also the author of The BFG, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches and James and Giant Peach) presents his typical style, pitting a child against horrible adults who actively hate or seek to do the child harm. The title character lives in a home that not only doesn’t appreciate her high level of intelligence, but ridicules it because her family is intimidated and scared by it. Matilda’s family is emotionally abusive and neglectful, which some parents would seek to avoid, but I find an honest approach to life. Dahl’s books don’t treat children like they can’t handle the darker side of things. Dahl doesn’t ignore that there are some pretty crappy people out there, and sometimes they happen to have kids.

Dahl, unlike a lot of authors, presents childhood as a battlefield. However not all children are perfect angels (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is an example here), and not all adults are horrendous bullies. In Matilda her family may be part of the problem, but she finds an ally in her teacher, Miss Honey, who is a survivor of a bullied childhood.

Through the book we learn not about revenge on bad people, or being nice despite being bullied and neglected, Dahl teaches kids to recognize and treasure the good parts of life, without letting the bad parts define themselves, or their experience.

Also a smart part of this book is the accelerated vocabulary, which again, shows that Dahl distinctly decides not to treat children as incapable or juvenile. Because of the number of big words, all used in a context that makes them easy to understand, this book is best read as a collaborative effort between an adult and child, unless an child closer to teendom is the reader.

I highly recommend Matilda on every level, especially because in the realm of fiction girls are often sentenced to be side kicks and creatures of first crushes, but Matilda is a strong, independent, intelligent girl who solves problems on her own. Matilda is the precursor to the more recent Coraline, with less a less scary and a more over the top spin.