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Roald Dahl: Children
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Roald Dahl was a great believer in the importance of reading. "I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers,” he once said, “to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.” He would, then, have been gratified by his obituary in The Independent, which paid tribute to the huge role he played “in getting children hooked into reading by offering them the kind of stories they really wanted to read. Stylistically too, he helped new readers by using language simply and accurately. The quality of his writing is easily discernible by the fluency with which it can be read aloud… For many children Roald Dahl is synonymous with reading. He is the one author whose books are currency among children, being passed eagerly from hand to hand as soon as they appear.”
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Roald Dahl was a writer with a wild imagination, and a gift for sharing his vision. Some of his children's books have been made into movies. Perhaps you've seen "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," "James and Giant Peach" or "Matilda?" Many more of his books (such as "BFG" or "The Fantastic Mr. Fox") are at the library, waiting for you to discover them.
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While he was working for the Shell Oil Company in East Africa, World War II broke out and Roald Dahl joined Britain's Royal Air Force as a pilot. Later, one of his duties for the British diplomatic corps was spying on the US government in Washington. There, he met C.S. Forester, who encouraged him to draft a story about his most exciting adventure as a pilot, later published in the Saturday Evening Post. In 1960, he began writing bedtime stories for children, the first of which was James and the Giant Peach.
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Roald Dahl was married twice. His first wife was Patricia Neal, the Broadway and Hollywood actress whose films include The Hasty Heart (opposite Ronald Reagan), The Fountainhead (with Gary Cooper) and Hud (with Paul Newman) for which she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Roald and Patricia were introduced by playwright Lillian Hellman in New York, where Patricia was acting in Hellman’s play The Children’s Hour. After their marriage, in 1953, they divided their time between England and America.
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When he was 9, Roald Dahl was sent to St Peter's Preparatory school, a private school in the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare, which he attended from 1923 to 1929. From 13 he was educated at Repton School in Derbyshire, where he was a fag for a prefect, became captain of the school Fives team and developed an interest in photography. During his years at Repton, Cadbury, a chocolate company, would occasionally send boxes of new chocolates to the school to be tested by the pupils. Dahl himself apparently used to dream of inventing a new chocolate bar that would win the praise of Mr. Cadbury himself, and this proved the inspiration for him to write his second book for children, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
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The son of Norwegian parents, Roald Dahl was born in Wales in 1916 and educated at Repton. He was a fighter pilot for the RAF during the Second World War, and it was while writing about his experiences during this time that he started his career as an author. His fabulously popular children's books are read by children all over the world. He died in November 1990.
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