There’s trickery afoot in this touching and brief story. Mr Hoppy loves his garden and he (secretly) loves Mrs Silver. Mrs Silver is oblivious of what Mr Hoppy feels and she gives all of her love to her tortoise! Mr Hoppy realises that the way to Mrs Silver’s heart is to help to make the tortoise grow. But how can he do that? Mr Hoppy comes up with a clever plan. Everyone is happy. Roald Dahl is a master of invention and his love of clever tricks – and here they are unusually nice ones - permeate this delicious story. ~ Julia Eccleshare
Roald Dahl's Esio Trot in glorious full colour! A lavish, large format full-colour edition of this funny, tender and poignant Roald Dahl story with coloured backgrounds on every page, illustrated by Quentin Blake, Roald Dahl's favourite illustrator.
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.
