Adults and older children will appreciate Dahl's superior storytelling skills, and will chuckle at Blake's animated, cartoony drawings. Hoppy, are backward creatures that 'can only understand words that are written backwards,' his exhortation to the pet begins 'Esio Trot'-which is 'tortoise' reversed.) It is a happy Hoppy who gets all the credit-and Mrs. Hoppy devises an elaborate scheme to make her think the tortoise is growing. Silver tells her neighbor that she will be his 'slave for life' if he can find a way to make Alfie grow, the determined Mr. Although the creature seems content, his devoted owner is concerned because he has gained a mere three ounces in the 11 years she has owned him. But all of her attention and affection is showered upon her pet tortoise, Alfie. Hoppy has leaned over his balcony rail to gaze longingly at Mrs.

This celebrated, splendidly matched author-illustrator team here present a 64-page love story that is equally sweet and silly. Quentin Blake, the first Children’s Laureate of the United Kingdom, has illustrated most of Roald Dahl’s children’s books. The BFG is dedicated to the memory of Roald Dahl's eldest daughter, Olivia, who died from measles when she was seven – the same age at which his sister had died (fron appendicitis) over forty years before. Thereafter his children's books brought him increasing popularity, and when he died children mourned the world over, particularly in Britain where he had lived for many years. His first major success as a writer for children was in 1964. When World War II began in 1939 he became a fighter pilot and in 1942 was made assistant air attaché in Washington, where he started to write short stories. In 1933 he joined the Shell Company, which sent him to Mombasa in East Africa. As he explains in Boy, he turned down the idea of university in favor of a job that would take him to 'a wonderful faraway place'. His parents were Norwegian, so holidays were spent in Norway. Roald Dahl (1916-1990) was born in Llandaff, South Wales, and went to Repton School in England.

Esio Trot by Roald Dahl