The BFG

What Hacker News says

1. paulmdMay 2022
   (other readers: sorry, I know this post is going to be a bit obnoxiously long, but I didn't want to put it on a pastebin or some other external service and potentially have it disappear if someone wanted to reference it in the future. If you're not interested please feel free to collapse this!)

   I actually asked my mom to compile a list of books she could remember, because a friend had kids and was getting to the age where they were starting to read too. Here's what she came up with (note, no particular order of difficulty or maturity here):

   My Father’s dragon series

   Where the sidewalk ends, Shel Silverstein

   A pizza the size of the Sun

   Choose your own adventure books

   The Great Brain

   The Boxcar Children series

   Captain Underpants

   Roald Dahl books: The BFG, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The Twits, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory/The Great Glass Elevator (not as good)

   My Side of the Mountain

   No More Dead Dogs

   The Secret Garden

   Bridge to Terabithia (Deals with death, a little older)

   The Lion, the witch, and the wardrobe

   Across five Aprils (civil war historical fiction, older)

   The Broken Blade (Voyageur) & Sequel

   Island of the blue dolphins

   The witch of blackbird pond

   Johnny Tremaine (a bit older)

   The sign of the Beaver

   Charlotte’s Web

   Because of Winn Dixie

   Tuck Everlasting (sad at end)

   Ruby Holler

   The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

   Treasure Island

   The Pushcart War

   Maniac Magee

   Rascal

   Frindle

   Hatchet (Gary Paulsen)

   Mr. Popper’s Penguins (young)

   Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing (Juy Blume)

   Pippi Longstocking

   Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle (young)

   A Wrinkle in Time

   Moccasin Trail

   Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

   From the Mixed Up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

   The Egypt Game

   The Phantom Tollbooth (young)

   Holes (little older)

   Sideways Stories from Wayside School (young)

   The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

   Homer Price (easy reading)

   The Indian in the Cupboard

   Misty of Chincoteague (series)

   Aesop’s Fables (young)

   The Eye, the Ear, and the Arm

   Redwall series

   Watership Down

   (I'll throw in the Discworld series too for kids that are getting a bit older! It's probably very readable for, say, an advanced 5th grader. I was tearing through all the redwall books and the Golden Compass series at that point and Discworld is probably comparable. Golden Compass wasn't finished then and The Amber Spyglass ended up being kind of a disappointment. I know I was reading Discworld by 7th grade for sure.)

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2. ifoundthetaoDec 2015
   The Hobbit - Liked, classic.

   How Ideas Spread - It was decent, I feel like it could be condensed into an infographic after the fact, and hold great value.

   The Lean Startup - Excellent. Changed the way I do business.

   A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1 - Great book, wonderful universe. Apparently Martin loves himself a good descriptions of clothes.

   A Clash of Kings: A song of Ice and Fire, Book 2 - Great book.

   Diary of a Wimpy Kid - Good book for a kid, pretty irritating kid though (the kid in the book, not mine).

   The Andromeda Strain - Excellent!

   Christ the Sum of All Spiritual Things - Great book! Very healthy view of a Christocentric theology.

   Dracula - Sleeper hit of the year. This book was awesome.

   Pippi Longstocking - Read this to my son, and we really enjoyed it.

   The Secrets of Power Negotiating - Helped me out during the process of buying a house by understanding various negotiation gambits. Would recommend.

   Scrum - Another book that changed the way I work. Would absolutely recommend it.

   The Wizard of Oz - Much better than the movie.

   The 4-Hour Workweek - .... It was "okay". I don't know. I'm still torn.

   The Swiss Family Robinson - Awesome book, full of fun things to talk about with your kids.

   The BFG - This was the start of the Roald Dahl stage for bedtime reading.. It's a great book, one of my favorite Dahl books.

   Matilda - Reading this as an adult, it was not nearly as fun as when I was a kid, however my son loved it.

   The Fantastic Mr. Fox - Fun and easy read for the kids.

   Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Pretty decent book.

   Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator - Terrible. Absolutely terrible.

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3. squidsoupSep 2010
   I'm reading the Harry Potter series to my 5 year old at a somwhat slow pace; slow, as we typically only have time for half a chapter per night and he seems to ask questions every odd sentence! I think he's managing to follow the story though - he just requires a bit of processing time and the odd query to keep it in order.

   You can never go wrong with Roald Dahl of course - my son loved the BFG and Fantastic Mr. Fox.

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4. namanyaygJun 2024
   > On the other hand, I certainly read some books too young, but I don't really regret that, so maybe I'm just making up problems to worry about.

   Don't have kids but I agree, this sounds part of growing up. I believe adult books as a precursor help understand real experiences better.

   Being a fan of BFG and Matilda, I accidentally ended up picked up Roald Dahl's "Skin" (his adult short stories collection) when I spotted it as a preteen in my school library.

   I didn't understand half of it but I still devoured it in a day.

   I only started understanding when I was much older and actually experienced similar things in life.

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5. beltaloadaApr 2024
   Roald Dahl also mused on this in his 1982 children's novel The BFG:

   'I can hear plants and trees.'

   'Do they talk?' Sophie asked.

   'They is not exactly talking,' the BFG said. 'But they is making noises. For instance, if I come along and I is picking a lovely flower, if I is twisting the stem of the flower till it breaks, then the plant is screaming. I can hear it screaming and screaming very clear.'

   'You don't mean it!' Sophie cried. 'How awful!'

   'It is screaming just like you would be screaming if someone was twisting your arm right off.'

   'Is that really true?' Sophie asked.

   'You think I is swizzfiggling you?'

   'It is rather hard to believe.'

   'Then I is stopping right here,' said the BFG sharply. 'I is not wishing to be called a fibster.'

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6. TimTheTinkerFeb 2023
   Roald Dahl's childhood biography Boy describes the incredible abuse he went through at Repton and an Old British primary school. Caning was a common punishment, love was never present, and fagging was an evil practice in which older boys were deputized to treat younger boys as slaves. There's a reason Dahl's fictional books so frequently feature kids getting revenge/justice against big bad adults (or giants, in the case of Sofie in The BFG).

   Boarding schools for minors are generally bad, IMO. My parents both went to (and one also taught at) boarding schools in the US. By their accounts, such schools tend to attract perverted or power-hungry maladjusted adults who enjoy the kind of power over others that can only be had at such institutions.

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