Griffin Reads – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Title: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Author: Roald Dahl

Genre: Children’s Fantasy, Whimsical Adventure

Summary:

Charlie Bucket lives with his loving but impoverished family in a cramped house and dreams of the rare chances he gets to taste chocolate. But when the reclusive and eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka announces a worldwide contest with five Golden Tickets hidden inside chocolate bars, Charlie’s life changes in ways he never imagined. Winning the final Golden Ticket earns him and his Grandpa Joe a tour of Wonka’s legendary factory, a place bursting with impossible inventions, edible wonders, and hidden dangers.

Dahl’s classic blends childhood fantasy with moral fable, using humor, spectacle, and just a hint of the macabre to create one of the most iconic children’s stories of the 20th century.

Content Guide:

• Mild peril
• Strong moral themes (greed, selfishness, kindness, gratitude)
• Whimsical but occasionally dark humor
• Depictions of poverty
• No graphic violence or mature content

My Thoughts:

We’ve all seen the movies, right? Whether you prefer Gene Wilder, Johnny Depp, or Timothée Chalamet, we all know the character of Willy Wonka and are intimately familiar with this story already. Or are we?

As my daughters graduate from picture books to chapter books for bedtime stories, we chose this book to read together as a family. I’d been read part of it by a teacher as a child, but my dominant association with the story was from the movies. Luckily, that wasn’t the case for my daughters. They hadn’t seen any of the movies, so they discovered everything for the first time in its original, literary form. And oh, how they loved it. Peals of laughter, wide-eyed excitement… I know these are cliches and you probably think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. My girls were genuinely excited for storytime every night and always begged for one more chapter.

If you know the movies, you know nearly every beat and moment in the book. It’s not a huge book, so much like The Hobbit, every nugget of creativity has been mined for cinematic content. But the way those elements appear in the original book may surprise you. There’s a lot less darkness in the actual story, and Wonka, rather than being neurotic or traumatized, is as often a warm, nurturing figure as he is a playful trickster. There are even a few elements that haven’t made it into any adaptation I’m aware of. There’s even a final set of verses to the Mike Teavee song sung by the Oompa-Loompas that talks about the value of books over television. Not hard to guess why the none of the movies included that.

If you’re reading this, it’s probably too late to discover this story the same way my daughters did, but it may not be too late for the next generation. Consider gifting the magic, wonder, and innocent morality of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to a child you love. Extra chocolate for those who read it to them.