Introduction
‘A five-year-old girl is reading books by Dickens and Hemingway,’ said
Miss Honey. ‘Aren’t you excited?’
‘Not specially,’ said Mrs Wormwood. ‘A pretty face is more important than books for a girl, Miss Hunky…’
Matilda is a very clever little girl. She reads all the books in the local library before she even starts school. She can multiply big numbers in her head quickly. But her parents aren’t interested in her. They like money and TV, and they don’t like books!
Matilda starts school late. (Her parents forgot to send her.) Her teacher is Miss Honey, and she is the best teacher in the world. The head teacher is Miss Trunchbull. She is the worst teacher in the world and she hates children!
Miss Trunchbull frightens the children and Miss Honey. But then Matilda discovers something very unusual about herself, and everything changes.
Roald Dahl was born in 1916 in Cardiff, Wales. His parents were Norwegian, and his mother often told him Norwegian stories. He wrote in notebook every day and hid them in the graden. He didn’t want his sisters to find them.
Dahl fliw planes in the Second World War. He began writing stories after the war. Some of his children’s books became very famous-James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG,as will as Matilda. There are films of all these stories. He also wrote frightening adult stories with surprises at the end. Dahl wrote his bools in a small wooden building in his garden. He died in 1990 in England.
The film of Matilda stars Danny DeVito as Matilda’s dad and Pam Ferris as Miss Trunchbull. Mara Wilson plays Matilda.
Chapter 1 The Reader of books