Roald Dahl’s Creative Writing

Roald Dahl’s Creative Writing with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Puffin Books, 2019) PB RRP $9.99 9780241384565

Roald Dahl’s Creative Writing with the BFG (Puffin Books, 2019) PB RRP 9780241384572

Roald Dahl’s Creative Writing with Matilda (Puffin Books, 2019) PB RRP 9780241384589

Reviewed by Dianne Bates

Capitalising on the popularity of the late Roahl Dahl, here are three 28-page books with coloured illustrations and plenty of exercises for the budding young writer. ‘How to write tremendous characters’ is the aim of Roald Dahl’s Creative Writing with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, while Roald Dahl’s Creative Writing with the BFG focuses on how to write splendid settings and how to write spellbinding

speech is the focus of Roald Dahl’s Creative Writing with Matilda.

In the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the exercises listed in the content’s page include backstory, heroes and villains, speech and dialogue, caring about characters and through each other’s eyes. Thus, the young person attempting the many exercises in this attractively presented book with fill-in boxed spaces, is told such this as how to give opinions and write news reports, how to create likable characters or what speech can reveal about a character.

In this book’s section on words and pictures, the reader is asked to look at illustrations and to use adjectives to create a picture. Some exercises relate to characters in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (matching adjectives with Charlie Bucket, Veruca

Salt, Augustus Gloop, etc), while there is also an exercise in creating a character (Choose a title, such as Dr or Lord), think of a first name and choose or invent a surname). The reader is then asked to make up full names for characters, such as a rich woman, a funny teacher and an elegant king. Then the reader is asked to make up names for Oompa-Loompas and to create dangerous beasts that might live in Loompaland. (An accompanying Ideas Box provides a vocabulary list such as ‘weasel’, ‘swoop’ and ‘pilfer’.

Thus, for each of the books, the young reader is asked to know the contents of Dahl’s book and to use this information creatively. And, too, there are exercises which rely on the reader’s imagination as Dahl certainly did.

These books are recommended to inspire and help budding young writer (teachers might also get some terrific ideas as well!)