In the interest of full disclosure, I am a Johnny-come-lately to the world of Roald Dahl love. As a child, my entire knowledge of him was limited to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
My elementary school librarian however is practically a Roald Dahl evangelist and will press his books into the hands of anyone who stands still long enough to take them. When I went to her in search of memoirs for my unit, she apologized profusely and handed me Boy. She told me (quite rightly so) that I would love it, but that there was just about no way I could teach it in a third grade classroom.
Dahl is a great author and he brings his childhood to life. At times I was laughing so hard tears ran down my cheeks. Yet it is amazing how someone’s childhood can be so completely inappropriate for children! Perhaps it is my American upbringing, but public school stories involving having your naked bum inspected by others (or beaten by a Headmaster) and being called Fag aren’t exactly things I can share with third graders!)
The Fag question is a particularly sticky one, because I personally can’t think of a situation where that word is acceptable. Evidently “fagging” was an established practice at British public schools. But in this day and age, in the US anyway, I can’t imagine offering children a context where use of those terms is really okay.
Age Recommendation: Grade 5 and up. And even then, I’d be much more comfortable with a parent making that call. As a teacher I probably wouldn’t recommend it to anyone below middle school without knowing their family well enough to gauge how it might be received.
Sex, Nudity, Dating – His father has a theory on exposing pregnant women to beautiful things so that the unborn baby is somehow exposed to beautiful things. He reports that his Matron has a “bosom.” He finds her in the embrace of the Latin master. At boarding school the boys flick each other with towels while naked. His older sister is engaged. Her fiancé is referred to as her “male lover” and kissing is mentioned. At boarding school, the prefects make the boys pull down their trousers so they can inspect how well they hit them on the bottom. A headmaster has boys pull down their trousers before he canes their bottoms.
Profanity – “damn,” “scummy,” “shut up,” “stinkin’,” “blighter,” “hell,” “damned,” For some reason the term “Fag” is heavily used. In this context it means a servant to the owner of a shared study at school. The “Fag” being a younger student.
Death, Violence and Gore – His father has a broken arm. A doctor treats it incorrectly; bone pushes through the skin; the arm must be amputated. His father’s first wife dies after the birth of a child. His sister died of appendicitis and his daughter from measles. All of the aforementioned deaths are very quickly mentioned. His father dies of pneumonia soon after his sister. This is explained in slightly greater detail. One boy talks about his father (a doctor) sawing off legs. The boys find a dead mouse. The headmaster repeatedly canes the boys (age 7ish) for bad behavior. Dahl later receives another caning at the hands of a different headmaster. It leaves considerable bruising. Dahl has his adenoids out and describes the event to you. Back in his day it was done without anesthesia so he can remember it quite well. Dahl writes about his mother’s death (when he was an adult I believe) and his own spinal operation. There is an auto accident and everyone is thrown from the car. Dahl is the only one injured, but his nose is nearly severed. The trip to the doctor and doctor’s visit are described in some detail. A boy has a doctor cut into a boil on his leg; he is not given any painkillers. At public school the prefects (called Boazers) frequently hit the boys.
Drugs, Alcohol and Smoking – A doctor is drunk and misdiagnoses and injury. The boys believe a candy contains chloroform. Grown ups drink wine and liqueur. Dahl says he is allowed to drink liqueur in Norway from the age of 10 and sometimes ends up “tipsy as a lord.” Dahl is given chloroform during his nose reattachment surgery. His sister’s fiancé smokes a pipe. The family plays a trick on him in regards to the tobacco. A headmaster smokes a pipe.
Frightening or Intense Things – A friend’s father has convinced them that Liquorice Bootlaces are made from rats’ blood. The process that would be used to make them is described in great detail. Roald sees his sister’s appendix after it is removed. His Nanny tells him that appendix trouble is caused by swallowing toothbrush bristles. A teacher is rumored to suffer from shell-shock.
I find your reaction to “fag” a little funny; as a kid I read a lot of old English boarding school books so I treated it like damn/dam — homonyms with a little spice because the other meaning was banned. It’s also commonly used as slang for cigarettes, which I found out in my later reading. But yes, it would make for a difficult read aloud in an elementary school.
Sometimes the slang goes the other way — don’t refer to a “fanny pack” in England because it means some thing quite different. And “Bloody” is actually fairly strong language.
Beth – I see the problematic part of my post. I had completely forgotten about the slang for cigarettes! I definitely understand that there are cultural differences when it comes to vocabulary. I do record “bloody” in my profanity section when it occurs in a book. For me, fag is especially problematic because (in my experience at least) it’s still fairly commonly used in the US as hate vocabulary. In my head, all I can hear is students saying “yeah, well, I wasn’t calling him THAT kind of fag” as a sort of sideways excuse. In other words, where possible, I’d rather not (in my role as a teacher) expose kids to something that could allow them to excuse homophobia by using an alternate meaning. It’s pretty cynical of me I guess, but there it is.
No, I definitely agree. In my family, we could read it because we’d talk about the words, but I think that would be much harder in a classroom, especially because homophobic words are thrown around so casually by little kids. I’ve gently explained to car pool kids that in my car we don’t use “gay” as an insult, so “fag” would be quite out of bounds. And I wouldn’t buy “I meant he was a cigarette” any more than I’d buy “I meant he was an aide to a prefect” as an excuse.
But I’m not shocked to find it in English books, although it’s getting rarer.