Book 4 of 44: The BFG

I discovered two more books that I borrowed at the very end of last year: Simple Living by Frank Levering and Wanda Urbanska, and An Eye For An Eye by Irene Hannon.  I would not say this is bad news because I am very much looking forward to reading these two books, but they do add a bit to my already-daunting task of reading all my unread books in 2011.

Roald Dahl wrote several children's chapter books, including Mathilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and The BFG.  I have read Mathilda many many times, the first of which was when I was perhaps eight or nine years old.  I loved that book, and I loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but I somehow had never read The BFG.

The BFG seems to be a story of big problems.  Sophie, the main character, is an eight-year-old orphan girl.  That itself seems to be a relatively big problem.  When we first meet Sophie, she cannot get to sleep.  This problem pales when she discovers that there is a giant wandering the streets.  When she gets kidnapped by the giant, it no longer seems important that he was wandering the streets.  Then Sophie thinks the giant might want to eat her.  He does not, but a giant problem emerges when she discovers that nine giants, twice as large as the one who kidnapped her, spend all of their nights eating people.

In the end, the BFG and Sophie come up with an ingenious solution to all of their problems.  What a fun little book!  I give it two giant thumbs up!