Fantasy: Matilda

Title of Book: Matilda

Author: Roald Dahl

Illustrator: Quentin Blake

Publisher: Random House

ISBN: 9780224025720

Reading the book Matilda by Roald Dahl immediately takes me back to my childhood. I remember enjoying this book as a child an also enjoyed the motion picture that was released depicting the Matilda story line. As an adult, re-rereading the book is nostalgic and reminds me of how enthralled in the story I became while reading. Matilda is the story of a very young girl named Matilda Wormwood who is extraordinarily gifted. To her misfortune, she was born into an unpleasant family who disregard her special skills and talents. Matilda, clever beyond her years plays tricks on her family to get back at them for the way they treat her, giving her a sense of satisfaction while distracting her family from mistreating her.

As a young girl, I related to Matilda, who found her love of books by the age of three after teaching herself to read. By the time she is four, she read through all the books in her local library. When Matilda is sent to school, she again faces unpleasantness in the form of the headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, but this is made easier when Matilda makes friends with her school mates and meets Miss Honey, the first person who displays a true nurturing side. Miss Honey immediately picks up on Matilda’s intelligence and wants to maximize her potential. Unfortunately, Miss Trunchbull opposes, seeing all children as inconvenient warts that must constantly be punished.

I give this book 4 out of 4 stars because the author, Roald Dahl, does a phenomenal job transforming his readers into the school ground setting and into the world of a young girl facing cruelty in so many places along with a glimmer of hope that there are still good people in the world. As a reader, I was thrown into a magical world of this young, intelligent girl, full of power in so many ways.  I cared for Matilda and rooted for her the whole way through. This book did a fantastic job of feeding imagination and creativity through its sense of fantasy.