"Sophie couldn't sleep."

Our final read-a-thon book for the month was the Roald Dahl classic, The BFG.  This is our favorite Dahl story so far.  It's fun and sweet and, well, has a bunch of grody stuff in it that little boys love.

Sophie is a small orphan girl who hears a noise outside the window and spies a shadow.  She realizes that the shadow is a very large man -- in fact, a giant.  Unfortunately, he has very large ears and he hears her at the window.  Soon, a large hand reaches in and grabs Sophie and she is whisked away in her blanket.  The giant turns out to be the BFG, the Big Friendly Giant, and he is the only one of ten giants that doesn't eat people.  Sophie learns all about the giants' lives and decides to do something about their human-eating ways.

Well, Z liked this book so much that he make me read the final part in a 75 minute marathon this afternoon.  I almost lost my voice!  The only thing I found that detracts from it's superb read-aloud qualities (the great words and character voices are a plus) are the uneven chapter lengths.  Some of the chapters are nice and short but others can take over twenty minutes to read.  Depending on your kid's attention span, you can decide if this works for you.

This book is full of amazing ideas.  Z loved the "frobscottle" (a fizzy drink where the bubbles go down) which helps you make "whizpoppers" (how the bubbles come out when they go down).  I liked the kid dreams that Dahl wrote about.  This is just a fantastic story and was a great way to end our many, many hours of reading this month!

Looking for a bit of the fantastic in everyday life,
K and Z


Support our site and buy The BFG on Amazon or find it at your local library. We borrowed our copy from the library.