The Minpins - Softcover

Roald Dahl

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0590163183 ISBN 13: 9780590163187

Publisher: Scholastic, 1996

Synopsis

Little Billy's mum says he must never go out through the garden gate and explore the dark forest beyond. So, one day, that's exactgly what he does. There he meets the Minpins: miniature people who live int he hollow trees. They soon warn Little Billy of the fearsome, galloping Gruncher, who has grunched thousands of Minpins. And it will gobble up Little Billy too - uness he can find a way to defeat the hungry beast, once and for all... Listen to THE MINPINS (with THE MAGIC FINGER) and other Roald Dahl audiobooks read by some very famous voices, including Kate Winslet, David Walliams and Steven Fry - plus there are added squelchy soundeffects from Pinewood Studios! Look out for new Roald Dahl apps in the App store and Google Play- including the disgusting TWIT OR MISS! inspired by the revolting Twits. Look out for the whole collection of wondercrump Roald Dahl books! The Enormous Crocodile; Fantastic Mr Fox; The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me; The Magic finger; The Twits; The BFP; Boy: Tales of Childhood; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator; The Complete Adventures of Charlie and Mr Willy Wonka; Danny the Champion of the World; George's Marvellous Medicine; Going Solo; James and the Giant Peach; Matilda; The Witches; Dirty Beasts; The Minpins; Revolting Rhymes For Teens: The Great Automatic Grammatizator and Other Stories; Rhyme Stew; Skin and Other Stories; The Vicar of Nibbleswicke; The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

About this title

Review

Someday someone will write a book that begins with a mother forbidding her child to enter the deep dark woods and ends with that child achieving incredible success without ever setting a toe in the forbidden forest. But not this book. Here, Billy's mom issues a few scary warnings about the woods to her son--"Beware! Beware! The Forest of Sin! None come out, but many go in!"--turns her back for a second, and the next thing you know the devil shows up and whispers something to Bobby about wild strawberries. Blammo! Guess where Billy goes--straight to the forbidden forest, of course. At this point, if you are reading the story aloud to your child, you may think there's a parable on the way. But just when you might expect to run into monsters named Lust, Avarice, and Three-Toed Sloth (okay, maybe not Lust), a real monster comes careening along and you realize that this story is just a fairy tale after all--and quite a lovely one at that.

The Minpins taps into the powerful, wonderful child's fantasy of discovering a hidden civilization of tiny folk that accepts and honors him or her. The very best part of this fairy tale is the denouement, where Billy receives the gift of nightly escape on the wings of a swan. One of Roald Dahl's only picture books--with fabulously crosshatched pen-and-ink illustrations by Patrick Benson--The Minpins is superb for reading aloud to the three- to eight-year-old set. And it culminates in a sentence or two of advice that your children just might remember for the rest of their lives. (Ages 3 to 8)

About the Author

Roald Dahl, the best-loved of children's writers, was born in Wales of Norwegian parents. After school in England he went to work for Shell in Africa. He began to write after "a monumental bash on the head", sustained as an RAF pilot in World War II. Roald Dahl died in 1990.

Edition details

• Publisher: Scholastic
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0590163183
• ISBN 13: 9780590163187
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: Patrick Benson
• Number of pages: 47