The Enduring Appeal Of Roald Dahl In Primary School Classrooms

Some authors have such an impact on the world of children's and young adult's fiction that they come to influence an entire generation of teachers

. These teachers grow up reading their books and go on to share their enthusiasm for these works with their primary school pupils, who in turn develop their own passion for reading and telling stories. While there are many authors who can be said to have had such an impact - Enid Blyton, Dick King Smith and Michael Morpurgo being just a few - there's one author whose timeless appeal has possibly had the greatest impact of them all: Roald Dahl.

Famous for stories such as The Twits, Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dahl's works are often the first experience that many children have of lengthy fiction and can be said to have become a seminal element of British childhood. Teachers have fed and responded to this enthusiasm by using Dahl's books in their teaching, creating activities around Dahl's plots and characters, and even having 'Roald Dahl Days' where the entire classroom is taken over by the author's creations. As such, Dahl's fiction has come to be a foundational aspect of primary school education.

But what is it about his work that makes Dahl so universally loved? It might be his obvious disdain for institutions and authority figures, such as Matilda's brutish Miss Trunchbull, that endears him to children just starting to discover and explore their own independence. It might be the heroic way in which he presents his child protagonists, each one fighting back against difficult circumstances with courage in a way that inspires and endears. Or it might just be the comfortably black-and-white world view that Dahl espouses, where good triumphs in adversity and evil is always severely punished. In all likelihood, Dahl's characters are just so easy for kids to empathise with that each reader forms a deeply personal connection with his various works.

Dahl's personal story may also serve as a reason for his enduring appeal. A former RAF pilot, his childhood mirrors his plots in ways that may make readers feel as if they are connecting with Dahl through his characters. Suffering the tragic loss of his elder sister and father at an early age, Dahl had a difficult time growing up and experienced fearsome punishments from tyrannical headmasters in his days at boarding school. Read in this light, books like Matilda seem like a form of gleeful comeuppance for his former tormentors, a kind of revenge through the medium of creative fiction that reveals the power of literature to aspiring writers.

Because of these reasons, it's likely that Dahl's themes, characters and messages will continue to permeate kids' early experience of reading for many years to come. His stories are often a mirror for the typical frustrations, aspirations and fantasies of the average child, and therefore have a timeless quality that may well impact on generations to come.

by: Hannah McCarthy

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