In Roald Dahl's imagination, giants not only exist, but most of them like to guzzle and swallomp nice little chiddlers.

Luckily, the BFG (Big Friendly Giant) does not swallomp nice little chiddlers; instead, he collects, manufactures, and shares dreams. Together, he and 8-year-old Sophie save the day – with a little help from the queen of England. This is a common and empowering theme in children's books: children can be powerful in ways that adults often are not.

This theme redeems The BFG from other sins. By all accounts, Roald Dahl was a horrible person (his characterizations of countries, races, etc., are dated and not at all politically correct), but he was also tremendously talented and had an extraordinary imagination. He remains very readable. "Am I right or am I left?"

Although The BFG was apparently written for a 8-year-old, it is probably aimed at somewhat older children and very readable even for people well beyond childhood.

David Williams read my version of this book, wonderfully. Listening to Williams would also make this book easier for earlier readers who might struggle with his malapropisms and grammatical errors. Mine was a stressful week, but it was difficult to listen to this without smiling.

We have all heard the story of Jack and the beanstock, right or left? We are all familiar with stories about giants, right or left? The BFG was a story that will make people smile but also encourage them to lock their windows at night... Takeing place in the United Kingdom the BGF captures hearts all over the world and I am so thankful to Roland Dahl for publising such a sweet book that shows friendship and love. This book captured my heart as it wil yours.

In London, England eight year old Sophie Evans is tucked tight in bed in a girls orphanage when she hears a noise outside durning the witching hour. Sophie bravely gets out of her bed and looks out the windo and what does she see but a great big giant with a... Well a trumpet... Sophie quickly runs back to bed and covers her head when a great big hand reaches in and snatches her from her bed in the girls orphanage. Away the tall creature took her until they ended up in Giant Country... Sophie was terrified that the giant was going to eat her but the BFG turned out to be a diffrent kind of giant. The Big Friendly Giant did not eat human beans because he felt it was disgraceful and wrong but his other giant friends did. The BFG was misunderstod by the others and was often pushed around and called names. Sophie becamw the BFG's best friend and she had no choice not to live with him because she had seen him that evening in London. The BFG was a dream catcher and he liked to mix certain things to make one dream it was up to him if he wanted to make a god dream or a bad dream. One day Sophie decided it was time for the other nine giants to be stopped from eating women and children so the BFG and Sophie decided to pay the queen of England a visit and in order to do that they had to mix a nightmare for her to see what was going on in her contry. Of course i am not going to ruin the whole book for you so i am going to stop there… I can tell you that  The giants were eventualy captured and taken to England where they were forced to live in cages and eat snuzzlecumbers ...

In my opinion is that this book is kind of scary for children under the third grade... No child is going to want to pick up a bok about giants eating children while they are asleep in their beds.

Child: Mommy is there giants outside?
Mother: Of course not *Shuts out the light and closes the door*
Child: *Eyes wide with fright*
Neighbors Dog: Woof! Woof! Howl!
Child: *Screams* Its the Bonecruncher and he is gonna eat me!!!!
From the other room you and your spouse are going to be watching telivision while you rson or daughter is haveing a panic attack at the other side of the house… Why?… Because you let them read a horrifying bok like this before they were old enough.

I got really engaged in the story and i personally wanted more adventure because in the end Roland Dahl speeds up the story way to much like he automaticaly wants it to end because he did not have anymore ideas. That upset me because the BFG could have been so much more adventuress and the author could have made him and little Sophie more plots. Most of the story takses place in Giant Country in the BFG's home. Lots of new words were learned for me in this story that even though are not real words i may still use them scrumdiliumptchus was one of my personal favorites… I rate the BFG with four stars for such a great one- hundred and fifty pages before slipping… The artwork was great and i loved not being able to put the story book down.

My Rateing
4/5

Miravibondo! Fantelastico!

One of my goals for 2017 is to read every book by Roald Dahl that I can get my hands on. I really enjoyed re-reading this book, since I haven't read it since middle school.

In the middle of the night many people are eaten by the Bloodbottler, the Fleshlumpeater, the Bonecruncher, or any of the other giants-rather than the BFG. However, Sophie is lucky! She is captured by the BFG. He is no ordinary bone-crunching giant. He is nice and caring. When Sophie finds out that other giants eat people, she makes it her goal to stop them.

Although sometimes I would get lost in the whimsical writing, there were times when the adultness (maturity) of the narrative would break in on my child-like enjoyment of the book. The BFG by Roald Dahl is ostensibly a children's fantasy book that can be read with adult eyes to capitalize(?) on the double-entendre nature of some of the situations. Setting that aside, I enjoyed it very much as a children's book, when I was a child and even when I read it as an adult to my children. The interesting thing is that I have always been able to separate the human flaws of the writer with the flawlessness of the writing so I get to enjoy the work for what it means to me, and not for what it could mean to others.

Not that the BFG is perfect. It is not, but to me, this is a children's horror story. I could not tell you how many nightmares I had after reading the BFG with its nine cannibal giants, Chitty, Chitty Bang-Bang with its child-catcher, and the Wizard of Oz with the flying monkeys. All of these were supposed children's stories that I read for the horrific monsters that were freed by my imagination. Dahl has many monsters in his books. Sophie is the wonderful protagonist of this novel. She is an orphan abducted from the orphanage one night by a Big Friendly Giant and learns about nine other giants that abduct, kill, and eat people every night. Along with the BFG, she decides to do something about it. Really fine writing.

I loved this book when I re-read it about a month ago just as much as I loved it when my third-grade teacher read it aloud to my class seventeen years ago. The Big Friendly Giant himself is charming, and I have always loved the cameo appearance of a certain very famous Brit. (I would love to know this person's opinion of the story, too - I personally would be delighted in their shoes.)

n  “We is in Dream Country,' the BFG said. 'This is where all dreams is beginning.” n

I love the BFG, as a child this was one of my favourite books (and films.) There’s just something captivating about the story, about how a mystical creature could appear in your bedroom in the middle of the night and take you to another world (a more exciting world.)

And that’s why Roald Dahl is such a successful children’s author; here he does exactly what the best books in the genre do. He gives you a glimpse of the real world, of the standard realities of everyday, then underneath it all he reveals something spectacular: he reveals fantasy. Time and time again a child is whisked off to experience the adventure of a lifetime. And when reading his books as a child of similar age, it’s so easy to imagine yourself in the shoes of one of his protagonists.

Reading it as an adult, gives the book a slightly different flavour. For starters, the hilarious nature of the language is blatant. And it just feels funnier. I was invested in this as a child, I cared about the characters and I was worried about what could happen. Now it just seems all so ridiculous.

It was fun and entertaining, revisiting a book I read fifteen years ago.

The storytelling is great but this definitely shows it's age. I wouldn't be doing 2019 justice if I didn't mention the racially insensitive vibe, or how everything was so weirdly divided by very odd boy|girl stereotypes.

honestly a life of solitude in which i am surrounded by dreams in jars and people have given me a cool nickname with an initialism for short and then later i become best friends with a quirky little girl and i meet the queen of england...

well, that sounds pretty good to me.

part of a series i'm doing in which i review books i read a long time ago

"Human beans is thinking they is very clever, but they is not. They is nearly all of them notmuchers and squeakpips," says the BFG in Roald Dahl's most philosophical work, and, well, that's about accurate I guess, and I'm not sure how I feel about exposing an eight-year-old to this kind of truth. Fine? Might as well start 'em sometime? "Human beans is the only animals that is killing their own kind," he also says, which is not actually true but the point is more or less valid. And "Just because we happen not to have actually seen something with our own two little winkles, we think it is not existing," which sounds like God stuff but I don't think it necessarily is; it's more about imagination than specific theology.

This is a heavy book, is my point. There's a lot packed in here. But "Meanings is not important" anyway, says the Giant. "I cannot be right all the time."

First of all, I read this book in my native language and I think much of the BFG's way of speaking was lost in the translation process. While reading, I was constantly wondering what the original words might have been.

Second, my son had to read The BFG for school. I think the story failed to fully capture his attention. So, he found himself in the situation in which tomorrow is the Reading Club at school and he didn't read it. As his reading speed is quite low for his 8 years, I read the book to him.

The BFG was a nice read, but I'm not a huge fan either. This type of story is not what I usually go for. Even as a child, my feelings would have been the same. I like princesses, and princes, and dragons, and... well, pretty much everything that was not in this book.

I hope my son's next Reading Club book is girlier (so I can enjoy it if I have to read it). :)

So this was ... different.
In the beginning I really wasn't sure whether to give this 3 or 4 stars.
You see, at first I wasn't all that much into the story. Sure, it was nice but the way the BFG talked was a bit tiresome and the story also seemed to drag on a little making it only slightly better than the 2nd Charlie Bucket book and not as good as the one about the giant peach.
However, it might just have been my mood (for some reason not much could hold my interest which is why I read quite a lot very short Kindle stories in between). Or the book improved over time. It could have also been a little bit of both.
Anyway, what makes this book really great is its advocacy against bullyism and the moral that wit is always better than muscles if you use it correctly.


The story, in short, is about an orphaned girl, Sophie, who wakes up one night and witnesses a giant. Because she has seen him, he has to take her with him so she can't tell other humans. However, he doesn't want to eat her like she feared because he isn't like the other giants (there's 9 of them) - he is a big friendly giant. But what to do about the others?!


As much as I grew tired of the BFG's speech, it was also hilarious at times and the sillyness really had a message of its own: it's like the Queen said - not educated but in no way stupid.
Probably the best word play was how the BFG called Charles Dickens Dahl's Chickens. MUHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Moreover, the fact that the Queen herself was one of the characters and the way she was described
was simply cool (there is no other word for it)!
And how I loathed the Queen's military advisers - in fact, one of the other HUGE plus factors of the book was their description and how they were shut down by the BFG and the others! The other one being the greatest joke in the book: "Do not feed the Giants!" *lol*.

The book had, as you can see here in my review, the usual cute and funny and wonderful illustrations by Quentin Blake (same procedure as in the other books).

All in all, not as good as the other books but not bad either. For the above mentioned reasons I can unfortunately not give it the full 4 stars though.
@Paul: You see now why we desperately need half stars here on GR???