Roald Dahl Day 2020
‘James and the Giant Peach’, ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’, ‘The Giraffe, the Pelly and Me’… do any of these sound familiar to you?
If so, you are probably a fan of the fantastically creative and frankly splendiferous author, Roald Dahl. On Sunday 13 September 2020 it is the 104th anniversary of Dahl’s birth, as well as the date of the annual celebration of Roald Dahl Day.
At school, children throughout the year groups have read to themselves, or listened to their teachers reading, many, many of Dahl’s children’s books and we have a great selection in the library for 
them to borrow too, his ‘Revolting Rhymes’ have been recited for House Off-by-Heart competitions and his autobiography, ‘Boy’, is a class reader in the Prep Department.
Roald Dahl has a truly amazing personal history, and it all started in 1916 in Cardiff, Wales, where he was born to Norwegian parents Sofie and Harald. He lost both his sister and his father at a young age, but his mother remained in Wales to honour Harald’s wishes that Roald be educated in traditional British schools.
Dahl spent his senior years in education at Repton School in Derbyshire, where one of his most important works was conceived. Apparently, the Cadbury Company regularly sent chocolate bars to the school to be tested by the students, which led to Roald’s dreams of creating a chocolate bar so delicious that even Mr. Cadbury would praise it! You’ve guessed it, this was the origins of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, and chocolate (as well as lobster apparently) remained one of his favourite foods throughout his life.
What you may not know is that Roald Dahl went on to become an ace fighter pilot during WWII, where he had a long and distinguished career in which he fought in some of the most significant air battles of the war. After the war, he went on to spend the rest of his career working as a diplomat, intelligence officer and, of course, a writer.
Dahl’s first children’s book was called’ The Gremlins’, and was written for Walt Disney Productions. From then on he continued writing prolifically, creating some of the most popular stories in children’s fiction history, many of which have subsequently have been made into popular films too, such as the many remakes of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, as well as ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ (written by Roald Dahl and Ken Hughes). Dahl is also famous for inventing more than 500 words, many of which have been incorporated into everyday language and all of which can be found in the Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary (I have a copy in the library for anyone who would like to borrow it).
Wishing you all a fizz-whizzing, whoppsy-whiffling, spliffling Roald Dahl Day 2020!
Mrs Emmett, Librarian
