Matilda by Roald Dahl: review

Matilda by Roald Dahl, Illustrated by Quentin Blake

Genre: Childrens Fiction, Fantasy, Humour

Publisher: Puffin

Synopsis: Matilda is a little girl who is far too good to be true. At age five-and-a-half she’s knocking off double-digit multiplication problems and blitz-reading Dickens. Even more remarkably, her classmates love her even though she’s a super-nerd and the teacher’s pet. But everything is not perfect in Matilda’s world. For starters she has two of the most idiotic, self-centered parents who ever lived. Then there’s the large, busty nightmare of a school principal, Mrs. (“The”) Trunchbull, a former hammer-throwing champion who flings children at will and is approximately as sympathetic as a bulldozer. Fortunately for Matilda, she has the inner resources to deal with such annoyances: astonishing intelligence, saintly patience, and an innate predilection for revenge.

The cover art is so cute and pretty looking 🙂 I especially love all the books. I remember reading Matilda a long time ago and I thought that I should reread it. I still love the writing and I still love Matilda.

Matilda is a fine young girl. She has a love for reading and learned how to read at the age of three and learned how to read fast and well at the age of  four. You can already tell that we are dealing with a little genius here. I could relate to Matilda very well and enjoyed reading about her. Miss Honey was a very sweet teacher and I found her very likeable and a bit tragic. I loved Matilda and Miss Honey’s friendship. Matilda’s family was horrible, didn’t believe in education, materialistic, and selfish. Ms. Trunchbull was evil. Trunchbull tormented children and manipulated everyone in the village to think that she was a good person. Whenever I read her name all I could think of was this:

And this:

Matilda is about a little girl’s battle against the people who treated her badly and how she came out victorious. I loved reading about Matilda giving her opponents the comeuppance. Her attacks were actually very funny and kind of cute in some ways. Whenever she had a small victory a smile grew on my face.

The first part of the book focuses on Matilda’s home life and the second part of the book focuses on Matilda’s school life. I enjoyed reading both parts and never got bored. (minor spoiler)Although it was only in the second part that Matilda got her powers(minor spoiler) Matilda’s friend Lavender could have been more developed since she did play a part in the story but she was a pretty good character considering her lack of development.

The ending was predictable. Matilda gets her ultimate revenge with the help of Lavender and there is a happy ending. It was a great ending though. The art in the book was very cute and had it’s own little style that I enjoyed looking at.

I loved rereading Matilda and I still think that Roald Dahl is a pretty darn good children’s book writer.

I give Matilda 4 out of 5 Stars