Matilda by Roald Dahl

Title: Matilda
Author: Roald Dahl
Reviewer: Stephanie
Genre: YA Fantasy
Rating: Love
Alerts/Warnings: None
Premise: Matilda is a little girl who is far too good to be true. At age five-and-a-half she's knocking off double-digit multiplication problems and blitz-reading Dickens. Even more remarkably, her classmates love her even though she's a super-nerd and the teacher's pet. But everything is not perfect in Matilda's world. For starters she has two of the most idiotic, self-centered parents who ever lived. Then there's the large, busty nightmare of a school principal, Mrs. ("The") Trunchbull, a former hammer-throwing champion who flings children at will and is approximately as sympathetic as a bulldozer. Fortunately for Matilda, she has the inner resources to deal with such annoyances: astonishing intelligence, saintly patience, and an innate predilection for revenge.

Opinions: Have you ever read a book that you instantly connected with? Now I'm not saying that I connected to Matilda because of her horrible family or her geniusness. No. I connected with her overwhelming desire for books and knowledge. I read this book when I was in elementary school. I think this was the first book that I remember reading where I truly connected to a character because she did what I would have done in so many ways. Or at least, what I would have wanted to do.

This is a funny book that paints an accurate picture of a truly interesting group of characters ala Roald Dahl. This is a great book. Definately supernatural in nature and most of the strangeness too fantastical to be real, but that is what I find so charming about Roald Dahl's writing. He takes the absurd and adds it to the mundane in such a way that you think maybe it could be so. Definately a book to read.