Roald Dahl is the greatest children's writer of all time for two really solid reasons. Reason the first, he has the greatest imagination of any adult I have ever encountered. His books are simply so wonderfully fantastical that there is no comparing them to anything else. They seem to be imbued with a silliness that mocks the serious fantasy novels that should really just be playing.
Reason the second is that he's pure badass. People die in his books. Like actually just die instead of the disney version where everyone lives happily ever after. Here some people live more happily after others have died. Dahl was a fighter pilot in the second world war and I would think that his close experiences with death taught him how simply unavoidable it really is.
Dahl's books are fantasy but they paint a more accurate world than conventional fantasy does. Dahl even swears in his book (not badly) but he seems to be part of the last generation who thought that kids didn't need to be sheltered, but instead educated and taught how to interpret the things that they read.
I love all the books I've ever read by the guy and I think that absolutely everyone would gain something by reading even a page of his prose. Quick read too, only about an hour or so.
9 centipedes out of 10. Good book. Read it.
Andrew
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