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!

Pages | 182

Target Audience: Children’s – 7-9 years

Read: 25th August

My recollection of this book is vague at best. I remember bits but not the overall story, so it will be interesting to reacquaint myself with the whole book.

Easy to read, Roald Dahl makes reading effortless.

It’s odd because there really isn’t much character development between the ending of ‘The Chocolate Factory’ and the beginning of this because the events of this book take place directly after. The characters appeared the same as they were before, but I did find myself getting annoyed by Grandma Georgina and Grandpa George, as well as Grandma Josephine. I was oddly startled by this because I don’t remember having an aversion to them before, or even thinking much of them really.

The characters here got a nice extension to their story here and it prolonged the excitement and adventure for Charlie. It gave him more to imagine at night, which I think might have been a good thing. That boy needed to be shown more of the world and what life could be, and not become dependent on eating cabbage soup for the rest of his life.

This was easy to visualise. No complaints from me.

It’s interesting because I went into this read fully expecting myself to be drawn into another Dahl world and find myself standing alongside the characters as the story unfolded. There was an element of that but there was also a lot of disappointment. I enjoyed the story to an extent, but I didn’t necessarily think it was essential for this book to have happened. For me, this book didn’t fly as high as ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ and it made me feel like things were just thrown together for the sake of it and not for the advancement of the story plot.

I did, and I didn’t. It’s tough because I love Roald Dahl. Dahl was one of the household names I grew up with and I always felt a sense of magic and adventure when I dived into one of his books as a kid. Maybe my tastes have changed as I’ve grown, or perhaps I expect more from a children’s book now. I just didn’t feel satisfied with this book on a whole, though the story is perfectly decent.