Roald Dahl (1916-1990)
[Type: Adult short fiction, Children's fiction ]

His strong understanding of people--their weaknesses and temptations, their goodness and cunning--makes his stories especially enticing. Couple this with excellent writing skills and you get stories you cannot have enough of. A few stories are quite macabre, though, so be warned.

Some of my favourites include Parson's Pleasure, An African Story, Galloping Foxley, The Hitchhiker and The Champion of the World. It's a good idea to buy the Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl because it contains almost all his stories. 

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Dahl's books for children are pure fun packed with laughs and delightful word plays. He must have been a wonderful real life storyteller to the children who were lucky enough to know him because he knows just what children of different ages would find outrageous, funny, and heartwarming.

He doesn't shy away from difficult topics like death, but deals with them with gentleness and humour. For example, in James and the Giant Peach, he says:

"Then, one day, James's mother and father went to London to do some shopping, and there a terrible thing happened. Both of them suddenly got eaten up (in full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped from the London Zoo.

Now this, as you can well imagine, was a rather nasty experience for two such gentle parents. But in the long run it was far nastier for James than it was for them. Their troubles were all over in a jiffy. They were dead and gone in thirty-five seconds flat. Poor James, on the other hand, was still very much alive, and all at once he found himself alone and frightened in a vast unfriendly world. The lovely house by the seaside had to sold immediately, and the little boy, carrying nothing but a small suitcase containing a pair of pyjamas and a toothbrush, was sent away to live with his two aunts."

Any smart child would know after a bit of thinking that a rhinoceros is vegetarian, and so find these deaths lighter since the cause of death is improbable. It also creates a comfortable distance from the story so the child knows it's just a story. Humour again winks when Dahl says that all James took were his pyjamas and toothbrush.

A single word can be used to describe Roald Dahl's books for children: wonderful! And luckily for the little people, he wrote several rhymes and stories and plays for children of all ages. Along with the hilarious and excellent illustrations by Quentin Blake for all (as far as I know) of his books, these books are excellent for your children's library--and an enjoyable read for adults as well!