Take a giraffe with a magic neck, a pelican with a retractable beak and a very agile monkey, and what do you have? The world's finest Ladderless Window-Cleaning Company, of course! Add in their friend Billy, the Duke and Duchess of Hampshire and the Cobra, the cleverest and most dangerous cat-burglar in the world, and you have all the ingredients for a deliciously funny tale - all in the pursuit of walnuts, salmon and the pink and purple flowers of the tinkle-tinkle tree, not to mention the Grand Opening of The Grubber...
Billy's biggest wish is to turn a weird old wooden house into a wonderful sweet shop. But then he finds a giraffe, a pelly and a monkey living inside - they're the Ladderless Window Cleaners! Who need ladders when you've got a giraffe? They become best friends and when they meet the richest man in all England, there's a chance Billy's scrumptious-galumptious dream just might come true . . .
A true genius...Roald Dahl is my hero David Walliams
Author
About Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl was born in Wales of Norwegian parents – the child of a second marriage. His father and elder sister died when Roald was just three. His mother was left to raise two stepchildren and her own four children. Roald was her only son.
He had an unhappy time at school - at Llandaff Cathedral School, at St Peter’s prep school in Weston-super-Mare and then at Repton in Derbyshire.
Dahl’s unhappy time at school was to influence his writing greatly. He once said that what distinguished him from most other children’s writers was “this business of remembering what it was like to be young”. Roald’s childhood and schooldays are the subject of his autobiography Boy.
Since Roald Dahl’s death, his books have more than maintained their popularity. Total sales of the UK editions are around 37 million, with more than 1 million copies sold every year! Sales have grown particularly strongly in America where Dahl books are now achieving the bestselling status that curiously proved elusive during the author’s lifetime.
