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On the Subject of Television and Reading - Roald Dahl


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“The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set --
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink --
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES!
'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it's Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole-
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.”

― Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

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I. Am. Guilty.

 

Maybe I'll tell them the tv is broken when they come to visit. Although I must say that they aren't slaves to the set. They love playing outside, going to the beach and library and playing on the computer and doing puzzles and working with playdoh and coloring pictures. They do have their favorite shows but if given the chance to go and do something and watching their show, they'd rather go and do something.

 

I do love that poem though. It might actually be speaking to me!

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I love this poem, I rather like a lot of his writing as I grew up reading it and having it read to me. At one point one of my favorite videos had all of his fairy tales on it...maybe not the best place to be saying this in context of the OP lol :D

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I've not read anything by Dahl, and love, love, love the poem you've posted, CG.  Thanks. :)

 

btw, the only thing that's on our TV would be DVDs we buy, or streaming.  We're out in the country, so don't get very good reception via antenna.  Years ago we had one of those satellite dishes, but good grief!, the junk that is on is just overwhelming. 

 

And what the heck?, why should there be booku commercials on when we are paying for the darned programming?? Grrrrr, pox on it!

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I've not read anything by Dahl, and love, love, love the poem you've posted, CG.  Thanks. :)

 

btw, the only thing that's on our TV would be DVDs we buy, or streaming.  We're out in the country, so don't get very good reception via antenna.  Years ago we had one of those satellite dishes, but good grief!, the junk that is on is just overwhelming. 

 

And what the heck?, why should there be booku commercials on when we are paying for the darned programming?? Grrrrr, pox on it!

 

Because unfortunately you don't actually pay enough. If you actually had to pay what it costs to cover the programming / broadcasts/system maintenance etc it would be unaffordable. Adverts pay for the content, in newspapers, magazines and TV. The unwillingness of people to be subjected to this necessary evil is actually causing something of a crisis - in print media especially. As newspapers and magazines are forced to have an increasing online presence traditional advertising doesn't work. Click through ads have pretty much run their course because no one clicks on them and/or has an ad blocker installed. Product placement in movies and TV shows has increased dramatically (watch a more recent movie closely specifically looking for identifiable products and see just how many there are now) as a partial solution to the problem but at the moment every one is scrambling looking for how to solve the advertising crisis.

 

 

Oh and you just have to read Roald Dahl. His children's books are just wonderful! I couldn't even begin to pick a favourite. Fantastic Mr Fox is all about the adventures of a hen stealing fox. George's Marvelous Medicine - George concocts a magic pill to heal his granny who is sick. If you ever made mudpies or 'cooked' as a child by throwing whatever you found, leaves, grass, water, bit of this, bit of that in a pot you will appreciate his approach. Matilda is for the unloved, unappreciated child in us - and who hasn't felt that way at some point or the other, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator are just wonderful mad escapism. Charlie is living in Dickensian poverty when he wins a magic ticket to visit Willy Wonka's chocolate factory - I'm sure you are familiar with the story - but the books are SO much better than the movies. James and the Giant Peach - James escapes his evil aunts by going on an adventure inside a giant peach with a 6 enlarged bugs. 

 

His adult books (short stories) can only be described as having a macabre sense of humour. And I just discovered I have by no means read all of his books myself 

 

 

Children's fiction:

 

The Gremlins (1943) · James and the Giant Peach (1961) · Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) · The Magic Finger (1966) · Fantastic Mr Fox (1970) · Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972) · Danny, the Champion of the World (1975) · The Enormous Crocodile (1978) · The Twits (1980) · George's Marvellous Medicine (1981) · The BFG (1982) · The Witches (1983) · The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me (1985) · Matilda (1988) · Esio Trot (1990) · The Minpins (1991) · The Vicar of Nibbleswicke (1991)

 

Children's poetry:

 

Revolting Rhymes (1982) · Dirty Beasts (1983) · Rhyme Stew (1989)

 

Adult novels Sometime Never: A Fable for Supermen (1948) · My Uncle Oswald (1979)

 

Adult short story collections:

 

Over to You: Ten Stories of Flyers and Flying (1946) · Someone Like You (1953) · Kiss Kiss (1960) · Switch Bitch (1974) · The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (1977) · The Best of Roald Dahl (1978) · Tales of the Unexpected (1979) · More Tales of the Unexpected (1980) · Two Fables (1986) · The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl (1991) · The Great Automatic Grammatizator (1998) · Skin and Other Stories (2000) · Roald Dahl: Collected Stories (2006)

 

Non-fiction:

 

The Mildenhall Treasure (1946) · Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984) · Going Solo (1986) · Memories with Food at Gipsy House (1991) · Roald Dahl's Guide to Railway Safety (1991) · My Year (1993)

Edited by CuriousGeorgette
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Revolting Rhymes, I still remember these! Loved Cinderella(and the prince leaving the glass slipper on a crate of beer), Snow white (and them all winning money at the races with th help of the mirror and let's not forget the three little pigs (and little red riding hood with her wolf skin coat and pig skin traveling case)! :)

Edited by Vimes
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That's a great poem! Last year I bought a boxset with a lot of Roald Dahl's work in it. I've read most of them in Dutch when I was a child, and have been re-reading them in English for the read-a-thons. I quite like all of the books I've read so far by him. I've also got Tales of the Unexpected but I haven't read that one yet. I'm reading the children's books first. I've read most of them, there are a few left in the boxset.

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That's a great poem! Last year I bought a boxset with a lot of Roald Dahl's work in it. I've read most of them in Dutch when I was a child, and have been re-reading them in English for the read-a-thons. I quite like all of the books I've read so far by him. I've also got Tales of the Unexpected but I haven't read that one yet. I'm reading the children's books first. I've read most of them, there are a few left in the boxset.

 

 

Happy reading!! 

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Pleasure ... can I persuade you to start :)

 

OK where should I start at ? Any must read recommendations? I must say although I did enjoy that poem I don't usually do poetry....would prefer a story. 

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If it wasn't for TV and all the English TV series, I probably wouldn't be on this forum :lol: I learned so much from the TV...

 

Well than, we need to thank the English series!  That was a good thing.  :D

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OK where should I start at ? Any must read recommendations? I must say although I did enjoy that poem I don't usually do poetry....would prefer a story. 

 

Raold Dahl is mainly known for his children's books such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and Matilda.  They're all really fantastical and really original.  He also wrote a slew of rather dark, mysterious short stories for adults, many of which were adapted for TV and film.  A couple were used for Alfred Hitchcock episodes and one was used in Quentin Tarantino's film Four Rooms.  His work, even the children's stories, is definitely worth a read.

Edited by dtrpath27
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OK where should I start at ? Any must read recommendations? I must say although I did enjoy that poem I don't usually do poetry....would prefer a story. 

 

The poem is from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which is so much deeper than the films made it to be. So that might be a good place to start as you probably have seen one or the other of the films - yes? 

 

If not, there really isn't really one book that stands out above the others as a good place to start. As said below:

 

Raold Dahl is mainly known for his children's books such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and Matilda.  They're all really fantastical and really original.  He also wrote a slew of rather dark, mysterious short stories for adults, many of which were adapted for TV and film.  A couple were used for Alfred Hitchcock episodes and one was used in Quentin Tarantino's film Four Rooms.  His work, even the children's stories, is definitely worth a read.

 

The adult short stories definitely fall into the 'macabre' category. They all have a dark twist in the tale. The children's books are definitely not just for children. The language is delightful and there are sub-texts that go over children's heads. 

 

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a combination of a Dickensian 'Oliver Twist' finds his ultimate dream type story, with lots of moralising on many issues from greed, to television (quoted above), spoiling children overly much etc. It is these points which are more aimed at adults reading the book than the children themselves.

 

Matilda is about an neglected child who is nonetheless very intelligent and her relationship with a special teacher in an awful school. The book is filled with lots of magical realism moments and is also a social comment on parenting and education.

 

James and the Giant Peach - a fantastical escape from the evil aunts, a flight across the Atlantic to finally land in New York and a hero's welcome. Every unhappy child's dream of running away is realised in this story. Again there is some social comment on child abuse and the need for love and good friends.

 

Fantastic Mr Fox - Mr Fox is a chicken thief. He is clever, smart and resourceful and is never caught. Well almost never. The farmers did manage to shoot off his tail on one occasion.  Clever Mr Fox does get his own back on the farmers after they try to starve his family out. The tale is a comment on fox hunting and the systematic destruction of species deemed 'a nuisance' to farmers.

 

Danny, Champion of the World - describes a loving relationship between a boy and his father, respectable petrol station owner by day and notorious poacher by night. Funny, wonderful book that is a comment land-ownership and privilege in the UK.

 

The BFG - the power of dreams! Perhaps the most 'children's book' of the lot although any one can learn the lesson of holding onto your dreams from the story.

 

George's Marvelous Medicine - George's Granny is sick so what is he to do? Make a Marvelous Medicine to cure her of course. Another one that is more of a children's book than the others but any adult who can remember making potions or "cooking" with leaves and mud will enjoy it.

Edited by CuriousGeorgette
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Don't forget The Witches, a story about a boy who discovers witches exist. I loved this one a lot too. Personally I'd start with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda or The Witches since these three are my favourites.

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 A couple were used for Alfred Hitchcock episodes and one was used in Quentin Tarantino's film Four Rooms.  His work, even the children's stories, is definitely worth a read.

Which one was used for Four Rooms?

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