Not his best, but interesting to read his first!

A short little story on a start of a Roald Dahl readathon Well written and enjoyable to read glad I picked this as a starting point.

Doesn't read like a Dahl book and is the worst book of his that I've read. There's a reason why most people have never heard of this Roald Dahl story.

Definitely not worth reading to your kids.

I feel like we were tricked into buying this book. We got it while visiting Pearl Harbor. It was sealed in cellophane, marked special edition "The Lost Walt Disney Production". Jake was egging me onto buy this, so basically we paid $12.95, to discover that there was a reason this was a Lost Production. However, I did find the article at the beginning of the book interesting. It told some interesting history about how Walt Disney Studios was commandeered to make training and other war-related films. It was also interesting to see how Ronald Dahl got started.

Enjoyable foreword by Maltin. I understand why the story never made it to film.

After reading Love from Boy: Roald Dahl's Letters to His Mother, I was curious about the project that brought Dahl to Hollywood to work with Walt Disney. The introduction by Leonard Maltin helped to put this in context, although in Dahl's letters to his mother, he goes into great detail about the animators he worked with and the Hollywood parties he attended. He took it all in stride.

Easy to see why this was out of print for 60+ years. Fairly weak and not well written story, although some of the artwork is pretty good. A dated and disappointing artifact.

This is a very quaint story, which I'm sure lots of children will love.

The Storyline
“In this most beautiful green wood there lived a tribe of funny little people who were quite different from the rest. They had funny horns growing out of their funny heads and funny boots on their funny feet, and with these boots – and this was funniest of all – they could walk upside down under the branches of the trees. Oh, it was a happy and peaceful life that these little men led – until the humans came.”

And so begins the story of the Gremlins who were torn from their homes when the humans decided to build a factory for airplane production. The Gremlins knew it was time to act and ‘to get revenge for the loss of our homes. We will make mischief for them, and we will harry and tease the men who fly them, until we obtain some satisfaction for all the harm that has been done to us.’



The pilots finally figured out a way to appease these pesky Gremlins: feeding them Transatlantic-special-deliver-airmail stamps. By feeding them this delicacy, they were finally able to talk to the Gremlins and explain why they tore down their home and that it was to save their homes from all being destroyed. The pilot asked the Gremlins to help and that if they assisted and were victorious that they would give them a patch of forest back to them to be their new home.

Interesting Facts
This was actually the very first children’s book that Roald Dahl ever wrote. ‘The Gremlins’ is a story set in the 1940’s when we were in the midst of WWII. This story was originally meant to be a film by Walt Disney but was dropped and never completed but the book was still published. This is considered to be a quite rare book as fewer than 5,000 books were published worldwide.

Thoughts
This was an adorable book that I stumbled upon. Highly recommended to anyone given the opportunity to read it!

Funny and ingenious at times, there are numerous stereotypes which have detracted me from fully enjoying this little story.

Gremlins were/are real. They are now known as UAPs... ❤️ed the Fifinella.

A cute little story about how the idea of "Gremlins" originated. Basically as a pilot in a dog fight when you landed and found you had a thousand holes in your plane you would blame it on the Gremlins.