The BFG

This book by Roald Dahl is one of the less-dark of most of most of his oeuvre, if I remember rightly, which is odd because it does actually feature (or at least mention) quite a lot of human people being eaten alive.

   Story in a nutshell: an insomniac orphan called Sophie is kidnapped by a giant with big ears and a trumpet, who takes her back to his homeland. Here he introduces himself as the BFG (Big Friendly Giant - even though, he is the least big of all the giants, and the only friendly one of all of them, so none of his nomenclature semantics are particularly helpful overall) and reveals, with much relief to Sophie, that unlike the other giants (who eat humans every night) he is strictly vegetarian - subsisting, it seems, on weird warty cucumber things and a particularly-odd strain of soda that makes you have orgasmic farts with every gulp. Sophie accepts this, and learns to trust the BFG further when he hides her from the other giants - who are in the habit of bullying him. Later on the BFG shows Sophie what he does for a job (why, it is never shown - goodness knows who pays him to do this if anyone); catching dreams in bottles and spitting them through his trumpet into the ears of sleeping humans. Sophie has a brainwave: "if we give the Queen a nightmare about giants coming and eating people, she'll do something about it!" Daft, I know. But this is what happens. This is Roald Dahl man, not... I dunno, Brian Catling. So the BFG takes Sophie to see the Queen of England, they have breakfast (which is a whole chapter, can you believe - not even Tolkien was ever THAT self-indulgent) and she agrees to set the military up to catch the giants next time they come to England to eat people. Surprise, it works, and the giants are captured and thrown into a pit. Basically the end.

   I saw a cartoon of this when I was like six, saw the more recent movie adaptation like four years ago, and I must have read the book (this time included) at least half a dozen times; and I still don't know why it's a popular story. This is pure silly. Your kid might like this. I do not. If I was your kid - I did not.