Boy: Tales of Childhood

For reading with an 8 year old boy, you can't do better. Roald Dahl replays his childhood with enthusiasm, excitement and joy. It's a funny, sad and an incredibly accurate description of being a young boy.

This book was a very interesting read. It progressed very well for a book that is not much more than a compilation of anecdotes. Roald Dahl has a very descriptive writing voice, whether he's describing the incredible beauty of Norway (the site of his summer vacations from when he was four until he was seventeen), or the several incidents when he was caned by the headmasters of his present school (the sound is comparable to a pistol being fired, and the pain is like being branded by a red hot poker). Some of the descriptions are a bit too gruesome or disgusting, for example when he vividly describes how his nose was about to fall off after he was in a car accident, or when he describes the malicious Mrs. Pratchett (the owner of the sweetshop in Dahl's home town) and how grimy and disgusting her clothes and hands were. The book describes a time back when there were no computers or televisions, and when someone wanted diversion, they went outside to look for it, instead of sitting down in a chair or couch and waiting to be entertained by a box. This fact contributed to the overall authenticity of the book, it took you back to when you had to make your own adventures, an era that sounded like one of the most interesting to be a kid in, and since that is unfortunately not possible for me, the next best thing it is to read this book, which I personally recommend to people of all ages.

We absolutely adored the book because of all the extremely funny stories and the wonderful way Mr Dahl wrote about them. He must have had excellent memory. But the thing we enjoyed the most was the fact that he wrote about his childhood in a way that was amusing not only for him, but also for us who have not experienced those kinds of things. We really felt like we were a part of the story.

Roald Dahl did it again! In this new fascinating story he tells the tale of his funny and adventurous childhood of growing up as a boy in England. In "The Great Mouse Plot of 1924," Roald knows a pesky old woman that works in a candy shop. He and his friends find a dead mouse and decide that they will put it in the Gobstopper Jar. As you can probably guess, eventually she finds the mouse and screams! (After that they got in quite a bit of trouble.) The hilarious main characters in this book are Roald Dahl, and his friends in all of his plots and messes that they were always up to. Roald called this book BOY becaouse of the letters that he wrote to his mother,ending with "Love, Boy." The horrid headmasters at his various boarding schools would not allow him to write anything "bad" about the school, otherwise he would get whipped with a cane on the back or the ankles.

This was the best book I have ever read. It was funny, like all Roald Dahl books, but more. Every page makes you want to read on.