Re-Reading Roald

What makes Dahl’s books so special?

In 2023 I decided to return to my childhood and reread (or read for the first time in some cases) Roald Dahl’s children’s books. Without knowing it, I struck the zeitgeist, as 2023 was a big year for the Dahl brand, for both good and ill. I’ve discussed all that in a previous article but after reading them all, I knew I wanted to talk about what I found in these books, beyond the limited scope of contemporary social discussions, because there is a LOT to say.

Rather than talking about each book individually (a mammoth task) I instead want to talk about some of things that make them so special. Dahl got a lot wrong and many parts seem dated, but — in far more cases — he remains utterly of today. I’ve boiled down what I have found to be his key understandings about children, or simply the world in which we live, and why that is still so appealing to everyone, but specifically to children.

Size and Scale

It seems a simple thing, and a lot of books do it, but Dahl’s ideas are fully aware of how big the world is to a child. As adults we return to places we inhabited as children and often say how small things…