Roald Dahl is a very well known children story writer, his Matilda won the Children’s Book Award shortly after it was published in 1988 and still is loved by many children and adults.
Matilda was first published in 1988 and is one of Dahl’s most famous works. It is illustrated by Quentin Blake (as usual with Dahl’s tales) and has a movie adaptation, and it is still quite popular as a Broadway musical.
It is a tale about a little girl, who is very clever and wants to learn about most things in the world, but unfortunately the adults around her aren’t very welcoming to her wish. Nevertheless, Matilda is a little superhero, she cares for the good people and seeks vengeance over the bad ones and her life changes, when she meets her teacher – Miss Honey, who sees Matilda for who she really is…
Matilda was one of my favourite books when I was a kid and that is the main reason why it took so long for me to read it again. I was quite afraid that I will think that the book is terrible and that it will ruin my memories of it. Thankfully that didn’t happen! I didn’t love the book, but I liked it quite enough.
This book made me think a lot about myself as a child, I don’t remember things that influenced me, but I had a few guesses while reading this book and I definitely could see myself relating to her. Although Matilda is very clever, she is also quite scary with how she gets back at her parents for being unkind to her. I don’t think that the unkindness done to her would make me want to do such things to anyone, yet, I think that Matilda had a good reason to be naughty.
Also I was very surprised to see Napoleon mentioned in the book (twice!). That is a historical figure that has always interested me, I think – even before I learned about him in school. I never knew why was it that I was a fan of him and I wonder, if this book, which had such a huge impact on me, wasn’t at fault. Perhaps I wanted to be as smart as Matilda? Well, I for sure tried to move things by looking at them…
This book shows a scary part of society and actually it addresses serious matters about parents being present in children’s lives and their impact on kids intellectual growth and education. Of course TV (what we hear about in this book) is not so much of a problem anymore, yet if Matilda’s father said ‘just watch the telly while you eat’, I am pretty sure we can say the same, if we change the sentence to include ‘play the iPad’ there. Surely it doesn’t offer much of a solution for the problems of ever growing society, but it makes one think.
I was kind of sad that the girl who talked and told Matilda and Lavender about the headmistress wasn’t more in the book. In my memories of this book, she was there more (probably because the book itself seemed longer), but I thought that she was a really cool character an the way author describer her was just amazing!
As I said, although I didn’t love the book, it made me think a lot about myself and what shaped my character, interests and well… life, and seems like Matilda had some role in it all. It received three stars on my goodreads page and I would recommend it for kids. I am not sure, if my mom would have approved me reading this book, if she knew, so perhaps some of the parents would want to read it before giving it to their kids.
And while I am at it, I would like to mention some of my other childhood heroes, which I loved and haven’t re-read, but based on my memories would recommend for children (I just added the books for which I could find a translation):
July 21, 2016 at 21:36
I love this story ❤
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July 21, 2016 at 22:49
The movie was equally amazing 🙂
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July 21, 2016 at 23:50
Funnily enough, I found out that a film exists before writing the review, when I was researching it. 😀 I had no idea.
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July 21, 2016 at 23:59
That Is amazing meaning there is more content 🙂 hope you enjoy it.
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July 21, 2016 at 23:11
I love Matilda! The movie is amazing 🙂
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July 22, 2016 at 08:11
Matilda kept me company when I was a child and running a fever. Lovely review! Reminded me of the fever-fun I had with Matilda 🙂
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July 22, 2016 at 19:07
A favorite of mine as a child. I may have to revisit it as an adult. I doubt it’s lost any of its charm.
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July 23, 2016 at 07:47
Matilda was actually the first English book I read and I remember loving it so much! Now that I’ve read this blog I think I need to give it another read to look at all the themes I failed to notice as a little kid. Thanks for the amazing observations~
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July 23, 2016 at 10:54
Great review! I adore Matilda – the copy I had as a child fell apart as I read it so many times and had to be replaced. I still have a copy now as an adult, it’s a wonderful story. I love the movie too – the girl that plays Matilda was so perfect in that role.
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July 23, 2016 at 18:26
I remember not taking to this book at all as a child, but I loved the Broadway musical so much that I revisited it as an adult, and I was able to recognize the details that annoyed me when I was young but still enjoy the larger story.
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July 25, 2016 at 20:34
You know, to this day Matilda is one of my favorite movies but I’ve never read the book! Thanks for reminding mr to check it out. 🙂
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July 31, 2016 at 23:22
Great review man! Glad that you still enjoyed it as an adult. I didn’t like the movie as a kid just because she was a girl (I know, little boys, right?), but looking back, I love the idea of her tapping into telekenisis powers brought upon by stress and trauma.
I’m going to read the book thanks to this review, and watch the movie, so I can do a book to film review of it. Thanks for hyping it up for me! 😀
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July 31, 2016 at 23:25
Also glad that you mentioned how her father tells her to distract herself with the TV and can be interchangable with an iPad. Both TV’s and iPads can be GREAT tools for education, but they are often misused for mindless entertainment, and so brilliant children like Matilda miss out.
Plus parents should be more present in their children’s lives, I agree. So many millenials are disconnected from their parents because the parents didn’t take the time to connect with them while they were young, and now the generation gap has a huge disparity in understanding each other.
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August 1, 2016 at 08:13
That is all great points you are making and I agree, technologies can be used for great things, but they can also be just another distraction to look at and mindlessly watching (doing, playing etc.) whatever. Luckily actually a lot of the games include some kind of mind and logic training even without parents and kids knowing it. 🙂
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August 1, 2016 at 08:11
Great, make sure to link it up here, I would love to watch it.
The funniest thing is that I didn’t know that the film exists until I was writing the review and researching Matilda and I told my bf: “Did you know that Matilda has a movie? 😮 😮 :o” And he is like: “Yeah, I’ve seen it like twenty times. Wtf is wrong with you, how haven’t you seen it?” 😀
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August 1, 2016 at 17:03
LOL he says that as if your childhood is incomplete until you watch it
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August 3, 2016 at 21:26
Pretty much! Then again – he said that they were on TV all the time, so it’s kind of surprising I haven’t seen it.
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