Bath and North East Somerset Libraries

The BFG is a nice and jumbly giant. In fact, he is the only big friendly giant in Giant Country.

All the other giants are big bonecrunching brutes, and now the BFG and his friend Sophie must stop them guzzling up little human beans – with some help from Her Majester, the Queen.

Throughout his young days at school and just afterwards, a number of things happened to Roald Dahl, which made such a tremendous impression he never forgot them.

Boy is the remarkable story of Roald Dahl’s childhood; tales of exciting and strange things – some funny, some frightening, all true.

Charlie Bucket desperately wants to eat more than cabbage soup every day. But even more than that, he longs to see Wonka’s enormous chocolate factory!

Now Mr Willy Wonka, the most wondrous inventor in the world, has hidden golden tickets inside his delicious creamy chocolate bars. Only five winners can go through those great iron gates; will one of them be Charlie?

WHOOSH! Inside the Great Glass Elevator, Willy Wonka, Charlie Bucket and his family are cruising a thousand feet above the chocolate factory.

They can see the whole world below them, but they’re not alone. The American Space Hotel has just launched. Lurking inside are the Vernicious Knids – the most brutal, vindictive murderous beasts in the universe.

So grab your gizzard! Hold your hats! Only Charlie and Willy Wonka can stop the Knids from destroying everything!

Danny thinks his dad is the most marvellous and exciting father any boy ever had – but Danny’s dad has a very big secret.

This secret leads them both into the strangest adventure of their lives, and a daring plot that makes Danny the champion of the world.

In Dirty Beasts we meet a ghastly menagerie of wonderfully comic animals that can only have been invented by Roald Dahl.

There is the toad that jumps to France – at his own peril; the pig who ponders the meaning of life; the anteater who gets the wrong end of the stick; and many more.

Snigger, titter and laugh at their antics in this collection of irreverent and absurdly comic verse!

The Enormous Crocodile is planning what to have for his lunch. This foul fiend – the greediest croc in the whole river – wants to eat something juicy and delicious.

His teeth sparkle like knives in the sun and he’s getting hungrier and hungrier. But what can the greedy grumptious brute guzzle up?

Beware – he’s looking for someone . . . someone who looks a lot like YOU!

Mr Hoppy loves Mrs Silver.

Mrs Silver loves Alfie the tortoise.

Sometimes Mr Hoppy wishes he could become a tortoise. Until one day he finds a way to win Mrs Silver’s heart, with the help of a little magic and some cabbage.

Mr Fox steals food from the horrible farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean – one fat, one short, one lean.

These three crooks concoct a plan to dig Mr Fox out of his home, but they don’t realise how truly fantastic Mr Fox is, or how far he’ll go to save his family . . .

George Kranky is eight-years-old and wondering what sort of mischief he might get into. George’s Grandma is a grizzly old grouch and George wants to teach her a lesson . . .

And when Grandma’s finished drinking George’s marvellous medicine, she’ll really have something to grumble about.

Billy dreams of turning a weird old wooden house into a wonderful sweet-shop.

But a giraffe, a pelly and a monkey already live inside!

Soon they are friends, and when they meet the richest man in England, Billy’s scrumptious-galumptious dream just might come true . . .

James Henry Trotter is about to go on the adventure of a lifetime . . .

James lives with his awful Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, two of the meanest people you can imagine!

Life isn’t much fun at all, until something peculiar happens at the bottom of his garden . . .

A peach at the very top of a tree begins to grow . . . and grow . . . and GROW! Inside are seven very unusual insects ­- all waiting to take James on a magical journey.

But where will this very special GIANT PEACH take James and his new friends? And what will happen to his horrible aunts if they stand in their way?

I bet you think you know this story. Meet Red Riding Hood as you’ve never seen her before in this hilarious picture book twist on a classic fairy tale.

After Wolfie gobbles Grandmamma in one big bite, he turns his attention to Miss Red Riding Hood. But little does he know, this small girl has a dastardly plan of her own.

This classic Dahl story is about an unusual little girl who has a magic finger. When things go wrong, she inflicts punishment by flashing her magic finger. The results include her teacher growing whiskers and a tail!

Matilda Wormwood is an extraordinary genius with really stupid parents.

Miss Trunchbull is her terrifying headmistress who thinks all her pupils are rotten little stinkers.

But Matilda will show these horrible grown-ups that even though she’s only small, she’s got some very powerful tricks up her sleeve . . .

Little Billy doesn’t really believe there are monsters in the wood, but the red-hot smoke-belching gruncher is real enough, and so are the tiny minpins, whose miniature world is in danger.

My Dad is FANTASTIC
He’s clever, kind and wise.
You’ll know he’s really smiling
By the twinkle in his eyes!

A read-aloud rhyming board book that celebrates dads everywhere – from their most FANTASTIC moments to their most magnificent WHIZZPOPS!

The perfect gift for your MAGNIFICENT mum this Mother’s Day!

A read-aloud, read-again rhyming board book that celebrates the brilliance of Mums everywhere – ideal for parents and chiddlers to read and share together.

Written by Al Blyth and inspired by Roald Dahl, this picture book is a guide to growing up the Roald Dahl way, with gloriumptious illustrations by Quentin Blake.

It’s a celebration of all the tremendous things children have in store – from adventure to inventions, chocolate cakes to rhino poo – along with a reminder that the very best grown ups are those who hold on tight to the kid inside.

You can think again if you thought you knew the stories of some of the most popular fairy tales.

Here are six of the best known retold, with more than a twist or two, by the master of the comic and the blood-curdling.

Mr Twit is a foul and smelly man with bits of cornflake and sardine in his beard.

Mrs Twit is a horrible old hag with a glass eye.

They’ve kept Muggle-Wump monkeys caged in the garden for far too long, and now the monkeys want to take their revenge . . .

The Witches have a motto: One child a week is fifty-two a year. Squish them and squiggle them and make them disappear.

The Grand High Witch of All the World is the scariest of the lot, but one boy and the grandmother he adores have a plan to get rid of the witches for good.

Take a pinch of unease. Stir it into a large dollop of the macabre, add a generous helping of dark and stylish wit, garnish with the bizarre and what do you have?

Roald Dahl at his brilliant, hypnotizing best, cooking up some of the most unusual stories ever told. Here in one volume are Tales of the Unexpected and More Tales of the Unexpected, making this a superb compendium of vengeance, surprise and dark delight.

Cruelty has a human heart . . .

Even when we mean to be kind we can sometimes be cruel. We each have a streak of nastiness inside us. In these ten tales of cruelty master storyteller Roald Dahl explores how and why it is we make others suffer.

Among others, you’ll read the story of two young bullies and the boy they torment, the adulterous wife who uncovers her husband’s secret, the man with a painting tattooed on his back whose value he doesn’t appreciate and the butler and chef who run rings around their obnoxious employer.

The second part of Roald Dahl’s remarkable life story, following on from Boy. When he grew up, Roald Dahl left England for Africa – and a series of dangerous adventures began.

From tales of plane crashes to surviving snake bites, this is Roald Dahl’s extraordinary life before becoming the world’s number one storyteller.

In these wickedly anarchic stories, Dahl explores the dark, sinister side of the psyche: the cunning, sly, selfish part of human nature that makes for unexpected outcomes and horrifying conclusions.

‘Dear Mama, I am having a lovely time here. We play football every day here. The beds have no springs’

So begins the first letter that a nine-year-old Roald Dahl penned to his mother, Sofie Magdalene, under the watchful eye of his boarding-school headmaster.

For most of his life, Roald Dahl would continue to write weekly letters to his mother, chronicling his adventures, frustrations and opinions, from the delights of childhood to the excitements of flying as a World War II fighter pilot and the thrill of meeting top politicians and movie stars during his time as a diplomat and spy in Washington. 

We fall not in love but in lust . . .

Lust, in all its myriad forms, consumes us. What won’t we do to achieve our heart’s desire? In these ten tales of twisted love master storyteller Roald Dahl explores how our darkest impulses reveal who we really are.

Here you’ll read a story concerning wife swapping with a sting in its tail, hear of the aphrodisiac that drives men into a frenzy, discover the last act in a tale of jilted first love and discover the naked truth of art, among others.

‘There is a pleasure sure in being mad, which none but madmen know’

Our greatest fear is of losing control – of our lives, but, most of all, of ourselves. In these ten unsettling tales of unexpected madness master storyteller Roald Dahl explores what happens when we let go our sanity.

Among other stories, you’ll meet the husband with a jealous fixation on the family cat, the landlady who wants her guests to stay forever, the man whose taste for pork leads him astray and the wife with a pathological fear of being late.

Scare yourself silly this Halloween with fourteen terrifying ghost stories chosen by the master of the macabre, Roald Dahl

‘Spookiness is the real purpose of the ghost story. It should give you the creeps and disturb your thoughts . . .’

Who better to choose the ultimate in spine-chillers than Roald Dahl, whose own sinister stories have teased and twisted the imagination of millions?

Here are fourteen of his favourite ghost stories, including Sheridan Le Fanu’s The Ghost of a Hand, Edith Wharton’s Afterward, Cynthia Asquith’s The Corner Shop and Mary Treadgold’s The Telephone.