Strangely, I don't like the illustrations.

Gremlins are, of course, those pesky little creatures that only fliers can see and which wreck havoc on their planes. In Dahl’s version of the story, the Gremlins were living happily in a lush northern England wood when one day, some humans showed up with the big trucks and machinery. First, the humans cut down all the trees and rolled over the dirt until it was hard-packed. Then, they built a factory that produced airplanes. In the process, they destroyed all of the homes belonging to the Gremlins.

Now homeless and angry, the Gremlins vowed revenge and set about sabotaging pilots and their planes. This was proving to be a problem during World War II whenever the RAF pilots came up against the German pilots. The Gremlins seemed to be as much their enemy as the Germans.


One pilot named Jamface told another named Gus that he had his plane's Gremlin almost reformed by feeding him transatlantic postage stamps, a rare delicacy in the Gremlin world. Gus tried that method, but with no success and on his next flight, he and his Gremlin were forced to bail out of their plane, because of the Gremlins antics. They ended up in the English Channel and for three hours, Gus tried arguing and reasoning with his Gremlin and finally won him over.


But while Gus may have won his Gremlin over, that was not so for all of them. The next time he went up in his plane, with a 102° fever, Gus didn’t count on a large group of Gremlins working against him as well as a German Heinkel, whose pilot proceeded to shoot his plane up. Gus took two bullets in the leg and crash landed.

Gus spent a long time in hospital, thinking about Gremlins. He came up with a plan for reforming them by opening the first Gremlin Training School. The school had two courses – Initial Training and Advanced Training. The school flourished and grew as more and more Gremlins discovered they liked being good.

When Gus finally left the hospital, he was no longer fit for flying. But what good is an RAF pilot if he can't fly? Yet, try as he might, he continued to fail the medical test for flying. Seeing his distress, the Gremlins decided to help Gus. Word went out to all Gremlins that on the day and time of the next medical exam, they were to show up and help Gus pass the exam. And so they did and Gus was able to return to doing what he loved - flying.

Gremlins were well known among RAF pilots, who talked about them all the time. After all, it was very convenient to blame them for everything that went wrong. Capitalizing on this superstition, Dahl wrote The Gremlins, after he has been invalided out of active duty in 1942. After Dahl finished his story, Walt Disney considered making it into a movie, even bringing Dahl out to Hollywood to discuss the matter. But the movie was never made, though no one really knows why.

The text of The Gremlins was written by Dahl but the illustrations were done by artists working for Disney, who own the copyright on them. Only 50,000 copies were originally printed in 1943, so copies were scarce. But in 2006 the book was finally reproduced in volume and is still relatively easy to come by.

Dahl had joined the Royal Air Force in November 1938. He later wrote about his early flying experiences in a children’s book called Going Solo. After many flying mission that resulted in being honored with the title flying ace, Dahl was invalided out of active duty due to severe headaches. He spent the rest of the war in Washington DC doing intelligence work. Dahl was invalided out of the RAF in 1946.

Though Dahl wrote for both adults and children, it is mainly his children’s book for which he is most known.
This book is recommended for readers age 10 and up.
This book was read at the NYPL.

A one sitting read (if you take Ukrainian public transport), this is Roald Dahl's first children's book. It's not really a classic but the story had been optioned to become a Disney film. That said, the only think I really liked about it was that Gremlins' favorite food was used postage stamps.

Roald Dahl e Walt Disney.
Insieme.



Devo davvero aggiungere altro?


E va bene.

Probabilmente avrete creduto fino a oggi che siano state le mitragliatrici della Luftwaffe a crivellare le ali degli Hurricane della RAF e a farne precipitare un gran numero durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale. Macché! Altro che proiettili!
Quei fori erano tutta opera dei Gremlins. Sissignori, avete capito bene. Dei Gremlins!

Si tratta del primo libro per bambini scritto da Dahl, nel 1943, quand'era ancora pilota della RAF, dopo aver ricevuto l'investitura ufficiale del titolo di "Scrittore" da Cecil Scott Forester in persona, che aveva molto apprezzato il suo primissimo racconto di guerra.

L'idea alla base del libro rientra nel filone del fairy tale nordico, nel folklore europeo abbondano le fiabe con folletti malvagi che ostacolano l'agire umano.

È la storia di Gus, pilota della RAF, che scopre l'esistenza dei Gremlins, dispettosissimi esserini responsabili di tutti i guasti e le avarie dei caccia britannici, invisibili a tutti fuorché ai piloti, e decide di stringere con loro un'alleanza.

Il libro nacque con palesi intenti propagandistici, ma l'idea di Walt era di usarlo come canovaccio per un futuro film, progetto che non si concretizzò mai.

Le illustrazioni dai tratti inconfondibili, in perfetto stile Disney Anni Quaranta, potrebbero forse destabilizzare chi è cresciuto con i disegni di Quentin Blake. Un rischio, a mio avviso, che vale la pena di correre.



Alla fine della storia prevarrà la pepata causticità di Dahl o il buonismo zuccherino di Disney?

"He is, indeed, an unhappy man who goes up into the sky to fight saying: "I do not believe in gremlins."

This book was hard to find. Clearly a first work, decent, but nothing special. Cool illustrations by Disney.

The Gremlins
By Flight Lieutenant Roald Dahl
3 Stars * * *

This book fills out the 'Book Blog Bingo Board' category of 'A 'classic' book written before 1950'.

This book is about a pilot in World War 2 who finds some 'Gremlins' on his plane one day. They were drilling holes in his plane and sabotaging it. He tells his mates about them and they eventually have the problem as well. The pilots then all teach the 'Gremlins' to be good and help the pilots on their mission. They also help a pilot pass a medical exam which he had to pass to be able to fly again.

I quite liked this book because it is a good story that relates to the time that it was written in. I especially like the way that the naughty gremlins were taught to be good gremlins and how they helped the pilots on their flights by doing things like de-fogging windows, plugging leaks in gas tanks and scraping ice of windows. Overall it is a good book with an easy to follow story line.

I wish someone would pick up this project and use Bill Justice's great illustrations to make an actual short!

I've never read this. Good book.

I absolutely loved the illustrations.

I think I might rate it 3.5 stars.

2.5 stars. This was the first book that I read with my son this year. While he found bits humorous, such as the parts about the dietary habits of the gremlins, this was one of Dahl's weakest stories, in my opinion, and also one of his earliest children's stories. It is also one of a handful of Dahl's many children's stories that I had not yet read with my son.

The most interesting aspect of this book was the four page introduction by Leonard Maltin, which unfolds the story of how Dahl had paired up with the brothers Disney (Walt and Roy) in the days of the Second World War to bring this tale of mythical creatures to life in a full-length animated cartoon. This intro really seems to paint Walt Disney as a bit of a power-hungry control freak (trying to suppress others from using the Gremlin idea, though this was already a very popular folk tale and had been used in Bugs Bunny shorts). And for many reasons, the film was never made. But as interesting as the intro may have been (which led me to rate this work 3 stars rather than 2, above) it could not save the work itself. For readers interested in the works of Roald Dahl it may be a disappointing read (especially if they come to this work after reading the bulk of his better known children's stories first), but it is an essential piece to understanding the beginnings of his writing career - a style that certainly improved with time.

I have read better books from Dahl than this.

Combining two of my favorite storytellers into one fun story? Yes please, and thank you! I loved this story and so wish it had made it to production.

Pretty cute, but not at all standard for Roald Dahl.