George's grandma is a grizzly, grumpy, selfish woman with pale brown teeth and a small puckered-up mouth like a dog's bottom. Four times a day she takes a large spoonful of thick brown medicine, but it doesn't seem to do her any good. She's always just as horrid after she's taken it as she was before. So when George is left alone to look after her one morning, it's just the chance he needs...
"The rule would be this: whatever George saw, if it was runny or powdery or gooey, in it went . . ."
George Kranky's grandma is a grouch. She's always mean to George (and not much nicer to his parents either).
One day, when George is put in charge of giving Grandma her medicine, he wonders if he can come up with his own remedy to try and help Grandma become less of a grump.
Using some rather unusual ingredients, George creates his magic medicine*. But will it stop his grandma from being so horrible . . . or will it shoot sparks out of the top of her head?!
*WARNING: Do NOT try to make George's Marvellous Medicine yourselves at home. It is likely to be extremely dangerous.
The text in this edition of George's Marvellous Medicine was updated in 2022 for young independent readers.
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.
