Book Review:The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl

Another review of another classic by the great Roald Dahl.

This story is told from the perspective of a little girl whose neighbors, the Greggs(Mr. and Mrs. Gregg and their sons Philip and William*) are very avid hunters; every Saturday, they go into the woods seeking out various animals(mostly ducks and deer) for the pleasure of shooting them. Naturally, the little girl doesn't appreciate this, and she tries to tell the Greggs to stop, but they rudely give her the brush-off. Well, this turns out to be a very unwise move on their part, because something they don't realize about this particular little girl is that she has...a MAGIC FINGER!

All this little girl has to do is point her magic finger at someone, and fantastic things happen to them. Proof positive comes the next morning when the Greggs wake up to discover that they've shrunken down to duck size and grown wings!!

And, on top of this, a family of ducks end up growing to human size, gaining human arms, and taking up residence in the Greggs' house!

The Greggs have to adjust to life despite this...but will they ever learn their lesson?




My thoughts:This is a very cute, clever, well-written book; the illustrations by Tony Ross(who also illustrated, among other things, the Little Wolf book series) are excellent.** The story, interestingly enough, has two morals. The first, more obvious one is, as the ever-quotable Popeye once said, "Be kind to aminals", which is, in fact, a pretty good idea. :-D  The second, slightly more vague moral is presented by the little girl herself, in that she tends to zap people, in anger, with her magic finger, and ends up appalled by the end results, the implicit moral being, "It's best if people control their tempers, otherwise they never know what can of worms  they might open," which is also a pretty good idea.

My only beefs about this book are:

-It's kind of short, especially compared with Dahl's other books.

-We never do find out what the little girl's name is.

All things said, this is a good, high-quality, and very enjoyable Roald Dahl classic.


*On an interesting note, the sons' names could be abbreviated as, "Phil and Will"(or possibly "Phil and Bill), which sounds similar to the names of another certain famous pair of siblings.

**There's another version of this book with illustrations by Quentin Blake(who's illustrated most of Dahl's other books); the illustrations of which are also very good.

Buy it on Amazon!