The BFG
1732
- roald dahl
- tweens
- teens
- teenagers
- ya
- young adult
- juvenile
- fiction
- fantasy
- make-believe
The story
This book is a great book for all ages. It is a fantasy/adventure book.The BFG stands for 'Big Friendly Giant'. He isn't like other giants, instead of going out to different countries to eat children he catches dreams. When he find's a little orphan girl watching him, he kidnaps her because he doesn't want anyone to find out that he was there, but when they arrive at giant's land they become friends and set off into the world to save all the children from the hungry giants.
What it’s like
Cosy, slightly eerie bedtime-story warmth: the book lives in the hush of a sleeping London street and then in a vast, dim giant's cave lit by jars of dreams that glow faintly in the dark. Dahl's prose is brisk, playful and conspiratorial, full of invented words that roll off the tongue and a narrator who talks to the reader as though sharing a torch under the blankets. The sensory world is rich with food and night air: swallowing fizzy sweetness, the creak of a huge kitchen, the rumble of a giant's stride across the countryside after dark. Pacing is unhurried in the early chapters and brisk once the adventure heads abroad, with gentle comedy undercutting the threat. Its tone is warm, mischievous and tender, a slow friendship between a lonely giant and a bold orphan girl who learns to trust him. Violence is mild and offstage: the other giants are menacing and there is a tense night hunt, but nothing is graphic and fear stays cartoonish. Suited to a cosy night in, reading aloud, or a child's first chapter book, for readers who want kindness, silliness and a little bit of shivery suspense.
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