A timeless classic by Dahl.

It tells the story of young Danny, he's being brought up by he's doting father in a caravan. We learn that Danny's mother died soon after he was born.

One night he discovers he's father isn't at home, after finding out Danny's dads big secret of being a poacher.

The story is all about the bond between a father and son, the pair plot the biggest coup that only strengthens their relationship.

A really nice heartwarming tale.

If there’s one thing to be said about Dahl is that when he’s good, he’s GREAT. This is such an excellent story, I fell in love with it from the first page and I had SO much fun reading it! I love how Danny and his father live an unremarkable and simple life and are so happy. And the adventures they get up to are just too hilarious, I kept giggling the whole way through. This is definitely a great, feel-good read!

In either year 2 or 3 (actually I think it happened both years) my class had a substitute teacher at the end of the year. She was amazing and I adored her. She would always read us stories which of course I loved. As well as this book she also read us Roald Dahls The Witches and The BFG.

Anyways I was totally enthralled with this story and the day she finished it I went home and was RAVING about it and either my brother or mother told me we had a copy of it somewhere that belonged to my brother but he never muched cared for it. I went rummaging and found it and it became mine. :D
I still have the same copy of the book! I have read it many times over the years. I love the life Danny and his father live. I think they are a beautiful family.

This is a really great kids book...okay a bit morally questionable at times (father is a poacher and they plot to make off with LOADS of pheasants from the local rich guys forest) but its still a really great kids book!

I think this is my favorite Roald Dahl book. I've reread it at least a dozen times since I was a child, and it's just marvelous. I love the bond the father has with his son, I love the drawings, I love the coziness of the caravan, and I love the great poaching adventure that the father and son embark on. Three cheers for Danny!

Saya suka pada ketabahan ayah Danny membesarkan putranya seorang diri.
Saya suka pada cinta Danny dan ayahnya.
Saya suka pada gambaran bahwa mereka bukan keluarga sempurna.

Dan setiap orang boleh untuk tidak suka pada suatu hal.
Saya tidak keberatan semua orang di kota Danny tidak suka pada Mr Hazell, si kaya yang sombong.

Yang saya tidak suka adalah gambaran bahwa orang2 di kota itu menganggap sah untuk mencuri burung2 pegar yang dipelihara di hutan Hazell, hanya karena hal tersebut menantang, nostalgik, dan karena mereka benci pada Mr Hazell.

Ini bukan buku yang saya relakan untuk dibaca oleh anak2 di sekitar saya sebelum mereka punya KTP... dan tidak ada warga ber-KTP yang mendampingi :p

*setelah selesai mengawas UAS Matematika*

This was my favorite Roald Dahl book as a kid, which I think is rather funny considering it's the only one that has absolutely no magic in it. But hey, it's a story about a gypsy boy who invents the best way ever to steal pheasants from rich people. How can you not love it?

This post is part of the 2015 Classics Challenge.

"A stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY".

Danny thinks his dad is the most marvellous and exciting father a boy could wish for. Life is happy and peaceful in their gipsy caravan, until one day Danny discovers his dad has been breaking the law. What's more, soon Danny has to join his father as they attempt to pull off a daring and devilish plot against their horrible, greedy neighbour, Mr Victor Hazell.

WHEN I Discovered This Classic
It came in my lovely Roald Dahl box set, full of 15 wonderful Dahl novels. I didn't know anything about it at all, except that it was my friend Caitlin's favourite Dahl story.

WHY I Chose to Read It
I've enjoyed reading Roald Dahl novels over the past couple of years. I haven't read one this year, so I thought it was about time. I chose Danny the Champion of the World because it's one that a lot of people seem to adore and yet is completely new to me, compared to some of the previous stories I've read, like n  The Witchesn and n  Matildan. I also haven't read any classics with illustrations this year, so I was looking forward to spending time with Quentin Blake's brilliant pictures.

WHAT Makes It A Classic
Roald Dahl's stories are like being inside a child's brain. They're full of humour and adventure. They're full of incompetent adults and loving adults. They're full of wonderful things to remember, like the quote at the top of this review. As I discovered when I first read Matilda, Roald Dahl's stories can also be enjoyed immensely by adults.

"Most of the really exciting things we do in our lives scare us to death. They wouldn't be exciting if they didn't".

WHAT I Thought of This Classic
It's different to Roald Dahl's other stories in that it feels more contemporary compared to the fun and whimsical stories I've come across so far. I adored that Danny's father would tell him stories, referencing Roald Dahl's other work, like The BFG and Witches. As I've read both of these, I enjoyed it very much. I remember there being a lot of chat about fictional fathers this year on Father's Day, and Danny's popped up as being one of the best dads in fiction. I can see why – he's a brilliant father. He's protective and yet will send Danny on exciting adventures. He tells wonderful stories and is incredibly intelligent. Danny's a happy child. His life isn't full of expensive things or luxury, but it's full of interesting and fulfilling experiences, and a lot of love, all down to his dad. Although Danny the Champion of the World isn't one of my Dahl favourites, it was a joy to read. I was ready for awful Mr Hazell to get his comeuppance!

WILL It Stay A Classic
I think it'll be a terrible year, the year that Roald Dahl's novels stop being read. I cannot imagine that this will ever happen.

WHO I’d Recommend It To
People who love children's stories, funny stories and heartwarming stories. People who haven't yet read a Roald Dahl novel and are a little wary about delving into the more eccentric stories. People who are young at heart.

I also reviewed this book over on Pretty Books.

After I told a friend all about the sneaky methods I was using to get my pet chicken to take her antibiotics, she told me I sounded like Danny in this book. Off I went to the library to see if Danny had better methods than me.

Sure enough, there are many similarities between my flock and Danny's pheasants - since I too use pre-soaked raisins to hide the meds. But I do wonder about the wisdom of drugging animals he plans to eat.

I know I loved Roald Dahl as a child but I don't remember much of the actual stories (I think I was too busy de-coding the text to absorb much context). This one doesn't have any of the magic, spells and potions that Dahl is famous for but it does have evil characters and promotes a simple life of contentment.

Goodbye Roald Dhal. I thought I liked you, but apparently I only liked Quentin Blake.



I received a whole box of Roald Dhal's books earlier this year. I got them because my family knows how much I loved Roald Dhal growing up, and now I have a YouTube channel and I though "hey, it would be cool to re-read all his books to talk about them on my channel". MWHAHAHAHAHAH!!!



No. I hated almost every single one of them and this book is quite possibly one of the worst books I ever read.



Danny is a young boy and he goes around doing funny activities with his father and the whole book is about these funny activities. Sounds pretty cute and wholesome, right? A part from the fact that this funny activity is - yes you are reading this well - poaching. This whole book is the story of a father teaching his child how to steal freaking birds and bond over it.



The more I read or re-read these books, the more I think that the people who say they love Roald Dhal they only say it because of how much they loved him as children. I'm sorry to hate on everybody's childhood favourite, but I mean you can't really get mad at me because he was mine too. I am more sad than angry at these books, to be honest. At least some of them are funny, this is just weird. But not even good weird. Like dull weird. So yeah ok NEEXT

The book follows a young primary school child who tells his story of his life and his father's. The story mainly centres around the child's love for his father and how best to trap pheasants, while evading the aristocrat character who owns the woods where the birds live.
I was fairly disappointed by this book from a renowned author as there was a very weak storyline that did not engage me. At times it felt as though the author was trying to just fill the pages with laborious and pointless diversions away from the main story, that again failed to spark my interest. The writing is best suited to KS2 and perhaps early secondary school with illustrations typical of their style. The children who would read this book will need a much better attention span as well as imagination than I have, as I had found it rather difficult to find anything good about the book. Perhaps those with an interest in poultry will find this story more to their liking than I did. Fantastic author but not because of this book.

Simply brilliant. Read this at school back in the 1980's. What a wonderful mind Ronald Dahl had. I remember how I envied Danny when he got to drive the vehicle. This was adapted into a film with Jeremy Irons I think. Film was good too

I got this book in 1988, when I was eight or nine years old, and it was a dear favourite of mine. The story of Danny and his fantastic dad, and their life in the old gypsy caravan by the petrol pumps and garage - it was at once a whole new other world, and something very near and dear to me.

Danny is raised by his dad, a mechanic and Danny's hero. They live in a colourful wooden caravan under a large apple tree, serving petrol and fixing cars. Danny's father teaches him all about cars and how to fix them, and Danny is a great help in the garage. At night his dad tells him fabulous stories, and when Danny starts school at seven, his dad walks him there and back every day. Danny has the best life, and he loves his dad more than anything.

Then one night Danny wakes up to find his dad missing. Anxious, because it is the first time his father has disappeared like this, Danny waits up for him. When his father returns, Danny learns that his dad has a secret: he's a pheasant poacher! His own dad was one before him and came up with several ingenius ways of poaching the birds, and Danny's own mother used to join him on poaching nights. This night marked the first night Danny's father had been out in the private woods - owned by the brutish Mr Victor Hazell - since Danny was born.

And so, Danny's father introduces Danny into the world of pheasant poaching - and Danny discovers that virtually the entire town enjoys a spot of pheasant poaching! Even the doctor and the policeman and the minister's wife is involved - and no one likes Mr Hazell, with his "tiny piggy eyes" and "smug superior little smile". But it is Danny himself who comes up with the most clever poaching plan ever conceived - a way to steal all one hundred and twenty birds at once, the night before Mr Hazell's shooting party arrives!

Perhaps because of the different illustrator, or perhaps because it is more of a realistic and human story than many of Dahl's other, Danny the Champion of the World has a different tone and feel to it than classics like The Witches and The BFG. It is more like his memoir of his childhood, Boy, and similar works. It is written for children, and has humour and a lightness of spirit to it, but it is also more serious. In keeping the story "real", though, Dahl shows just how fantastic our real lives can be, without giants and witches and other fantastical things.

It is also a story of one boy's childhood in what I figure was the early 50s, and as such it reads like a story of a completely by-gone era. The chances of someone now having a childhood like Danny's is pretty slim, and so there's something nostalgic about his story - perhaps, again, inspired by Dahl's own childhood, not in the details of the story but in the characters, and the mischief. It's also nostalgic in that small English village way, where everyone knows everyone's secrets, finds clever ways of pulling the wool over the eyes of people they don't like, and can generally be counted upon in a pinch.

In the schemes for poaching pheasants, there is definitely a touch of the wildly flamboyant Dahl we all know and love: "The Horse-hair Stopper" and "The Sticky Hat"; and in the description of oafish and cruel Victor Hazell. Danny's father, who's never named, is a fantastic figure, and when Danny calls him the best father in the world, you find yourself easily agreeing with him. Well, he may be at times irresponsible and a little wild, but he has the qualities you want in a great father - and this is Dahl's message, proudly spelled out at the back of the book:

n  A MESSAGE
to Children Who Have Read This Book

When you grow up
and have children of your own
do please remember something important

a stodgy parent is no fun at all

What a child wants
and deserves
is a parent who is

SPARKYn

It's great, even as an adult, to come to that at the end of the book (something I had completely forgotten was there) and be reminded of what I loved and admired in adults when I was a kid. I loved the artist friend of my parents who, when he and his wife came over for dinner, would take the time to entertain us with magic tricks and make us laugh. Or my nanna when she would put me on her lap and read fairy tales to me. Or my dad (and grandad) when he'd lie on his back in the passage, put me on his feet, and toss me over his head, always catching me and setting me on my feet. Learning about plants with my mum. These are the memories we keep, after all - the ones that chase the darker shadows away. It seems like the current trend in parenting is to fill your kids' days with activities, sport, hobbies, studies, rather than spend time having fun with them. Or even to buy horrid plastic toy sets and computer games for toddlers and older - it's so much better to let kids invent their own games, make their own toys and things out of random household odds and ends and scraps, and play amongst themselves.

Danny's inventiveness in the poaching scheme earns well-deserved praise from his dad and others, and his father calls him the champion of the world - far from being a form of gross steroid to a child's self-esteem, it humbles Danny but leaves him re-affirmed in the greatness of his one remaining parent. The two are a close family unit who share everything with each other, and so it doesn't matter that they're poor, that they live in a little caravan with just a little paraffin stove to heat up food on: they have each other, and love, and great stories and fantastic adventures. Having money isn't the key to happiness, is I think Dahl's other message here.

On a side note, it was interesting reading this after so many years, because I had a vivid memory of one of Bennett's illustrations at the very end of the book, which doesn't exist! I remembered it ending - with accompanying illustration - with all the pheasants roosting in the apple tree above the caravan. I must have invented this ending for myself, as a child, and improved upon it each time I read it until it supplanted the real ending in my head. I've done this with other things from my childhood, so it wouldn't surprise me in the least. It is the ending I would have liked, but not a realistic one!