Matilda - Roald Dahl's best-loved story - is an unbelievable 25 years old yet it's as fresh, funny and poignant as when it was first published in 1988. The story of a child genius, it has been adapted into film and, most recently, a hugely successful, award-winning musical with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin.
A beautiful clothbound edition of the much-loved modern classic Matilda. Bound in real cloth with two coloured foils and sprayed coloured edges, this deluxe edition is a perfect gift or collector's item. Part of an eight book set published to mark the 85th anniversary of Puffin Books. With a brand-new foreword from Robin Stevens. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: you are not alone.
Matilda is a brilliant child with a magical mind.
But her parents have decided she's just a nuisance who wastes too much time on reading and stories.
And her headmistress Miss Trunchbull is a terrible bully, who thinks children are rotten and awful and should be locked up.
Now it's time for Matilda to find the power to change her story, and show them just how extraordinary children can be . . .
Collect all eight titles in the Puffin Clothbound 85th Anniversary Collection
THE STORY OF TRACY BEAKER by Jacqueline Wilson with a foreword by Beth Lincoln DIARY OF A WIMPY KID by Jeff Kinney with a foreword by Dapo Adeola CHARLOTTE'S WEB by E.B. White with a foreword by Jordan Lees MATILDA by Roald Dahl with a foreword by Robin Stevens THE EXTREMELY EMBARRASSING LIFE OF LOTTIE BROOKS by Katie Kirby with a foreword by Nadia Shireen PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEF by Rick Riordan with a foreword by Nazneen Ahmed Pathak PIG-HEART BOY by Malorie Blackman with a foreword by Adam Kay WONDER by R.J. Palacio with a foreword by Tom Fletcher
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.