I didn't grow up with english speaking children authors, the only one I read when I was young was Enid Blyton, her Famous Five were everywhere. But because of it I was missing out on everything Dr. Seuss, and also Roald Dahl.

And also I watched the movie when I was a kid, I never read any of his books.

I'm glad I finally picked up one of his books because he is GOOD!!! Fantastic storytelling, a bit darker than expected, but very captivating for younger readers.

Also Kate Winslet, who is narrating the audiobook did an amazing job. One of the BEST I ever listened to. She really used her acting chops in this book, I was blown away by her voices. It's a perfect audiobook for young reader!

While I personally love a book about a child prodigy (especially in the area of telekinesis), I had a different reaction to this book while rereading it as an adult. As a kid I thought Matilda was awesome, she was intelligent and independent. As an adult I see this as a book about gross neglect and a commentary on absentee parenting and its role in our children's education.



I come from a county where the dropout rate is high and everyone wants to blame the teachers, but no one identifies the real problem of parents or caregivers not taking an active role in their child's schooling. To many of them, school is free babysitting and nothing more. They take no interest in helping their children succeed and tell the educators that it is their job to teach the children, disavowing any responsibility of their own. Once in a while you have a special case like Matilda who decides to work on her education on her own, despite the indifference of her parents. But more often these children turn into cases for Child Protective Services (or the equivalent) due to the negligence occurring in their home lives.



Matilda gets her happy ending, but most children in similar situations do not. Reread this as an adult with the above perspective and you will find a chilling tale of a child trying to create something better for herself than the toxic circumstances she was born into.

she's my original villain story. i wanted to be just like her and some more to beat her

This book was MAGNIFICENT. I would have adored it as a kid, and even as an adult, I thought that the language was so enchanting, the storyline was heartwarming and gripping, and Matilda herself was such a strong and dynamic role model. I will definitely be investing in more Roald Dahl books, because I thought this one was beautiful and the pictures went with it so well and all the descriptions were so nice and it was such an enjoyable reading experience.

However, I docked a star from this because I felt as if there was some antagonization of athletic and overweight women. Anyone who wasn’t described as skinny or beautiful was described as a villain, like Trunchbull and her athletic body type constantly being something to be seen as gross and inhumane, and as other bullies who are described as being fat are seen as sloppy and unlikable. Additionally, I felt Trunchbull herself turned into a horrible character. I realize that a lot of the situations in this book are hyperbolized, but literally throwing kids around with no penalties even though another adult was present felt very abusive and although Matilda and Lavender worked to play pranks on her to get her back, it read as really severe and actually made me uncomfortable and pitiful for the children at certain points.

But for a kid’s book i’ll take it with a grain of salt and just say that I really really wish I would have read this as a kid and it’s making me want to read all the classic children’s literature.

This is my third book by Roald Dahi (1916-1990). I did not plan to read this because I’ve already read his more famous (earlier) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) and his boyhood memoir, Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984) which are both included in the 501 Must Read Books that I am trying to read completely. However, the Filipinos group here in Goodreads selected this book as its bestseller read for this month, September 2011 so I had to buy and read this one too.

This book's main protagonist, Matilda is a precocious, smart and telekinetic 4-y/o book lover who puts super glue on the inside lining of his father’s hat so her mother has to cut the hat and the hair of the poor father so he can sleep properly. I am sure some women, for whatever strange reason, find this funny. However, for a father like me, it is definitely not. No one, fathers included, is perfect. Even if Matilda’s father is mean, obnoxious, shouts at Matilda or does not agree to buy her books and asks her to watch the television instead, he is the one putting food on the dining table. Matilda has to respect his parents. This also includes his mother who, even if she is insensitive, who leaves Matilda all by herself at home every afternoon to play bingo, at least, does not physically hurt or starve her to death. Hence, Matilda has no right to disrespect her parents including scaring them by hiding a parrot up in the chimney, even if the parrot is as lovable as the one in the book. I know that this book is intended for children and most of my GR friends say that they read and liked when they were young (this came out in 1988) so my griping or nitpicking is totally misplaced as I am now an old dog. But hey, I will not tell my teen daughter or my very young nieces to read this as I don't see Matilda as a good girl role model for them. Try Dorothy in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz or even maybe Pippi Longstocking but definitely not Matilda.

The other reason why I find this book inferior Dahl's other works like Charlie and Boy is the one-dimensional character of the antagonist, headmistress Miss Trunchbull. Why did she become nasty? I understand that the headmistress is not the highest official of a British school, so what do the other school authorities are saying about Miss Trunchbull’s behavior towards the students? Granting that Miss Honey is afraid of her, considering that the other children are not afraid to talk, are they not saying anything to their parents who in turn can get in touch with the other school authorities or even the police?

However, I cannot fully dislike this novel. Any booklover main character is hard for me not to love. Dahl’s children’s books are mostly based on actual people and experiences that he met or had when he was a young boy as his memoir Boy: Tales of Childhood stated. As examples, Miss Trunchbull’s character is said to be based on an actual nasty teacher he had in British school or the conteest entries to the chocolate factory in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were based on real life chocolate recipe contests used to sponsored by Cadbury during his childhood years in England. Also, the relationship of Matilda and Miss Honey should have been inspired by the homesickness that Dahl experienced at British school while he was away from his mom. Aww, sweet boy.

This book is not really bad. I only thought that Charlie and Boy better written, more truthful and more inspiring.

"You chose books and I chose looks." Matilda's mom kills me. I chose looks. I like to look smart too, though. In high school my bro's friends would pick on me for owning so many books. I pretended to be dumb like Matilda and said I hadn't read any of the books and they were trophies to make me look smart. That answer was apparently the right thing to say (probably about the only time I've ever said the right thing either. If it is right to say either like eye-ther I said it like eee-thur, and so forth). (Scary glimpse into my mind, I conciously pronounce it both ways so I'll have a percentage chance of getting it right.)

One of my favorite childhood books. I can't remember anything good about grade school that wasn't reading Roald Dahl (and a few other not-Roald-Dahl-peoples, to be fair *mutters*). My other memories are stuff like getting puked on and having to wear (all day!) nasty clothes from the '70s from the lost and found. I remember this boy my twin and I absolutely loathed 'cause he ate tuna fish sandwiches with his mouth open (yuck!). We'd go home at the end of the day and pool stories of the day about nasty stuff like that. One of the classes we were allowed to share (public school systems apparently believe in seperating twins. Bastards. It's not like we were gonna form a group and hate people together...oh, wait) was English class. I loved it when Lauren got her turn to read aloud. She did the best ever Matilda's mom. My favorite characters were the nasty ones like Matilda's parents. The funny nasty ones. Trunchbull was disgusting. She actually kept kids in an iron maiden type thing. Vicious! I love Roald Dahl. He'd have hated tuna fish sandwiches and that disgusting '80s fad of "a train going through a tunnel", fo' sho.

I can't believe the big deal made about margarine versus butter. My mom was permanently on a diet and I cannot drink real milk to this day (yes, I know that skim milk is basically white water). Same deal for margarine. I might not have ever had real butter. So what if Miss Honey had real butter? She had food! That also appealed to me greatly as a kid, 'cause we were not allowed to have anything that might tempt my mother away from her diets (she broke them in secret and hid the evidence. Meanie). I remember reading Matilda and getting hungry over all the food stuff. The Twits didn't make me hungry (my bird is shooting me nervous glances right about now, in case I get any pie making ideas). Roald Dahl wouldn't have starved his kids 'cause he wanted to look hot for book jacket photo shoots.

p.s. The Twits is my favorite Roald Dahl book.
p.s.s. James and the Giant Peach is also really great. The only time I didn't hate my classmates (we had feuds over The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) was when we related to loving Roald Dahl. Except they sucked at reading aloud so I really did still hate their guts.

Review to come, of course. This is Roald Dahl at nearly his best. I'm reading it too slowly for my taste but sometimes life gets in the way. I thought his best book is Going Solo actually. But Matilda is quite original. It's like the movie Home Alone, only the parents are the villains. It's a bit of an exaggeration, but I just threw it there.

Okay, done.

This was such a fun read, drenched with magical writing, and emanating the familiar bouquet of bittersweet nostalgia feeling that I am wont to experience with my favourite Roald Dahl books. It reminded me of the absolute mastery of the author in couching the absolute horrors of human nature within staples of children literature, such as growth, triumphing over personal fears, standing up against unfairness, camaraderie, using ingenuity against adversity and so on. As a child, I did not grasp the depth of scars that could be sustained when visited with the tragedies mentioned in here. But ironically, as an adult I found them to be crippling in the extreme.

Most of the darkness in this book is conveyed through Ms. Honey's past. Her loss, the sense of being trapped, and then abused, bullied, almost all of these originating from the bovine Trunchbull. I mean between her and the Wormwoods, it sometimes seems as if they are neck in neck in the running for the Knobel Prize for douchebaggery. But the truth is that the Trunchbull is operating on a whole other level. The Phelps (not the kindly librarian in the book, but the all-conquering, Olympic swimmer) of the competition, if you will.

Though I seem to make the book sound like a foray into the wintry-gray ambience of a Russian novel, it really isn't remotely as bleak. Roald Dahl very deftly veils most of the ugliness from us, softening most of its impact. Matilda's pranks against the escalating shenanigans of her horrid, anti-intellectual parents are hilarious. I also liked the description of Matilda settling in, cosy as can be with hot chocolate to engage in some bookworming (Though with a touch of envy I must say. The delights of hot chocolate are quite lost to me as I live in a fairly warm, sometimes boiling part of the island I'm from). And I never thought I would cheer for an obese boy to go through such an unhealthy amount of chocolate cake. By the time he was done, he was my hero.

Schadenfreude doesn't cover what I felt when the comeuppance comeuppanced (or should that be cameuppance?). It was a vicariously cathartic experience to realise all would be well again. If it hadn't, this would not be a children's book. But it is. And I'm grateful for that.

La verdad es que siempre tuve curiosidad por leer este libro ya que siempre amé la peli, pero honestamente esperaba otra cosas y resultó no ser mi favorito de Roald Dahl, tiene obras mucho más ingeniosas y entretenidas.

Lo dejo en un me gustó.

Sin embargo, le voy a dar cinco estrellas porque:

1º es Roald Dahl
2º es Matilda
3º detesto a los adultos que le dan puntajes negativos a libros infantiles. Dios no permita que me convierta en uno alguna vez :P

Matilda is such a famous book/movie that I think it doesn't need a synopsis.

So, I'll get into the middle of things and admit that this is my first time reading the book (and my first time seeing the movie). *hides*

The reason I read this in the first place is that Matilda is my son's next book assignment. I felt nervous because I'm not a fan of Roald Dahl's The BFG and didn't know what to expect. And yet I am thrilled about this book. I absolutely love it and highly recommend it (to those who, like myself, failed to read it until now).



P.S. I very much prefer the book to the movie.

My second 5 ⭐️ of 2024 Anyone who reads Matilda will instantaneously fall in love with her. Her brilliant mind will leave us intrigued. I am certain that the list of books Matilda manages to read in the first six months when she visits the public library will inspire every reader to read and re-read Charles Dickens, Jane Eyre, Ernest Hemingway and many other classics. Matilda is a five year old who almost self-teaches herself everything: reading, cooking and taking care of herself. She is honest, intelligent and deserves all the love in the world; unfortunately, she has parents who are selfish and cunning. A sense of despondence lingers in Matilda's heart each time she thinks of her parents who look at her like she is stupid; on the contrary, she is a little bundle of brilliance.
More in my blog: https://booksfoodmylife.blogspot.com/...

Five and a half year old Matilda is already reading the likes of Hemingway and Dickens while computing complex sums in her head at the drop of a hat. But she has a horrible family who despise her and her precocious intellect - which is nothing compared to the flat-out hostility of her new school’s headmistress, the monstrous Miss Trunchbull! Luckily, Matilda finds a soulmate in her kind teacher Miss Honey and together they set out to teach the bullies a lesson, once and for all!

Matilda was Roald Dahl’s last masterpiece. He wrote some other books afterwards but they don’t measure up to Matilda as among his greatest accomplishments. And it is a masterpiece. I love this book. This is my third, maybe fourth time re-reading it, and each time I’ve read it, from my first time at a single digit age to now in my thirties, Matilda never fails to blow me away or put a smile on my face. Dahl’s reputation as the consummate children’s author remains unassailable thanks to books like this.

Matilda is an immediately empathetic character as she’s introduced as “The Reader of Books” who falls in love with reading and books and who reading this can’t relate? Characters are Dahl’s forte. One might criticise the one-dimensional goodies and baddies - the good guys like Matilda and Miss Honey are practically saints while the baddies like Miss Trunchbull and Mr Wormwood are as evil as can be - but those kinds of over-the-top, unrealistic characters with black and white morality are a fixture of the children’s books genre. And anyway Trunchbull and Wormwood are so much fun to read when they’re being so ridiculously nasty, not least as it makes it all the more satisfying when they get their comeuppances!

And of course they do. Matilda is a fine book not least because it tells an always entertaining story with memorable characters in beautifully written and effortlessly easy-to-read prose; but also because of what it promotes: kindness, honesty and a sincere love for books and learning. The characters that extol these virtues are rewarded and those that don’t, and who usually try to stamp it out in those that do, are creatively dealt with!

Quentin Blake’s iconic illustrations accompanying Dahl’s words perfectly complement the story and his depictions of the characters are spot on. This new edition, celebrating Matilda’s 30th publication anniversary, also includes new drawings imagining what jobs Matilda would have had as a grown-up. Alternately: Chief Executive of the British Library, an astrophysicist and a world traveller.

I don’t have a single fault with the book. It’s not my favourite Dahl - that would be Fantastic Mr Fox, closely followed by The Witches - but it’s easily among his best and an undeniable masterwork. It’s a children’s book that I feel that any adult would also enjoy as much as a kid and I recommend it to any and all, anywhere, anytime - it is a tremendous pick-me-up! Happy 30th, Matilda - here’s to re-reading you many more times in the years ahead!

Although on rereading as an adult I can see a lot of problematic content in some of Dahl's books, there's still something timelessly endearing about the clever little girl who loves to read.

Matilda is a wonderful protagonist. She's never boastful, never rash. She's a friend to everyone, and loves with her whole heart. Her relationship with Miss Honey is so pure, woven from the need to be seen, as two lonely souls meet and form an everlasting friendship.

I couldn't write a review of Matilda without mentioning Miss Trunchbull, one of the many Road Dahl villains who stands out as utterly deplorable, awful and evil. She's a parody of every horrible teacher we've ever had at school, gone to the extreme of putting children in The Chocky and throwing them over walls by their pigtails. She's deliciously evil, and I would have really liked to have seen more of her interactions with the other teachers - who are clearly as terrified of her as the children.

Definitely one of the better Dahl books, if you can let slide the casual fatphobia however I do prefer the movie (shock horror!)