Melanie'sBookReview

Title: Roald Dahl and His Chocolate Factory Author: Andrew Donkin Publishing Team: Scholastic Ltd N.O pages: 192 Genre: Biography ISBN: 0-439-99909

Champion Boxer, War Hero, Spy, Business man and Writer, Yes, we are talking about Roald Dahl! Roald Dahl and His Chocolate Factory is a role play of Roald’s life, from the day he was born to the day that he died.

Roald was born on the 16th of September 1916. He had 1 brother and 5 sisters. When Roald was only 4 his dad died. After losing his father his mother sent him of to an English boarding school (St Peters,) which he hated. Roald was very excited when he finished at St Peters, but he was sent of to another English boarding school, Repton, (which he hated even more!) At Repton Roald’s report wasn’t very good. His best subject was sport and you never would have guessed it, his worst subject was writing! They said that there was no hope for him, (they were wrong!)

After leaving school Roald was lucky enough to get a job working at Shell. When He had worked at shell for about a year he got offered a job in Africa, of course Roald said YES! In Africa Roald experienced some very interesting encounters.

Roald always wanted to learn to fly, but of course learning to fly was very expensive. So Roald jumped at the chance to learn for free, the only catch was that he had to fly and fight against Germany in World War 2. Roald crashed on his first flight and after ending up in hospital he tried again this time with a bit more luck. After a few successful flights Roald couldn’t fly any more because of injures from his crash.

To follow on with the Army involvement he returned to England and became a Spy. While Roald was back in England he started his writing career, by writing notes for a news article, the publishers loved it so much they paid him £1000.00, (that was a lot of money back then!) Roald then discover his talent for writing and he wrote a line of adults stories. Soon after Roald became a writer he met and married actress Patricia Neal. They had 3 children, Olivia, Tessa and Theo, but Olivia died at a young age.

After writing big success stories like James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG and many more Roald became a screenwriter. Roald wrote the script for 36 Hours and the Night Digger as well as many other films that fell apart. Roald soon realized that screenwriting wasn’t his thing and returned to writing.

Roald Dahl and his Chocolate Factory lets you explore Roald’s life, all the ups and downs he experienced and proved that just because he was dead famous doesn’t mean he wasn’t human. I would recommend this book to any one that has read any of his books; it clearly displays all the work that went into them.

Melanie