SIMPLY CHAMPION (Danny the Champion of the World - Roald Dahl)

Member Name: stuleg

Product:	Danny the Champion of the World - Roald Dahl
Date:	30/09/04 (478 review reads)
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“This book is about a most private and secret habit my father had, and about the strange adventures it led us both into……”

Danny lives with his father in an old gypsy caravan behind the filling station they own, it had been this way since Danny’s Mother had died when he was just four months old and Danny would not have it any other way. His father taught him so many things, from being able to strip and clean an engine in the workshop to the names of all the local flora and fauna. But Danny’s father had a secret, a longing that he had kept in check all the while he raised Danny but eventually gave in to when Danny was nine years old. Danny awoke one night to notice the absence of his fathers steady breathing, a quick look in his bed confirmed that he was not asleep nor was he in the workshop next to the filling station. Hours passed with Danny sitting on the caravan steps waiting and worrying before he finally sees his father walking down the country lane towards their caravan, and when he realises that Danny is awake he shares with him the most amazing secret, a secret that will change their lives.

“I loved the far intent look on my Fathers face when he was telling a story. His face was pale and still and distant, unconscious of everything around him.”

Danny’s father had been at Hazell’s woods; Victor Hazell was a despised brewery owner who – according to Danny`s father - had ideas way above his station. He owned virtually all of the land surrounding the filling station and could be seen shooting along the country lanes in his silver Rolls Royce. His crowning passion was the fact that he owned one of the best pheasant woods in southern England, woods in which he held an annual start of season shoot for the rich and gentry. Danny`s father had been doing a spot of poaching, a practice that it seems virtually everyone thereabouts partook in such was the universal hatred for Victor Hazell. And now, with the opening shoot fast approaching Danny hits upon a marvellous idea, an idea so clever and yet so simple that it simply has to be tried, an idea so ingenious it could change the face of poaching forever…..

“It is impossible to tell you how much I loved my father. When he was sitting close to me on my bunk I would reach out and slide my hand into his, and then he would fold his long fingers around my fist, holding it tight.”

If there is anyone reading this review who does not know of Roald Dahl I’d be most surprised, in my mind he is quite the most brilliant author around. You can keep your J.K. Rowlings and your J.R.R. Tolkiens, Roald Dahl is the undisputed king of the writing world with Danny the Champion of the World (DTCOTW) amongst the best of his work. The book has so many elements to it that it needs repeated reading just to appreciate them all. On the surface DTCOTW is a tale of poaching pheasants and outsmarting a spoilt bloated land owner, but beneath the surface it is about the complete love between a father and his Son and the joys and troubles of raising a child as a single parent. Danny is bought up in a caravan poor in fringe comforts yet rich in love and happiness, his father always involving him in any tasks or adventures he can think up thus strengthening the unique father/ Son bond. At one point in the book Danny is caned by Captain Lancaster while at school, when his father finds out his anger is unquenchable, with a good hiding promised to the abusive bully. But Danny convinces his father that fighting Captain Lancaster will only make things worse, and reluctantly his father agrees. Throughout the episode though the way in which Danny’s father is so enraged at anyone hurting his son is touching and heartbreaking, a father’s love for his son pushed to it`s very limits.

“What I have been trying so hard to tell you all along is simply that my father, without the slightest doubt, was the most marvellous and exciting father any boy ever had.”

DTCOTW is my all time favourite book, and yet up to about a month ago I didn’t own a copy. While browsing my local library I noticed a paperback copy for sale in the withdrawn section of books, and parting with the princely sum of 10p I at last had a copy of one of the best books around. Quentin Blake has added some wondrous black and white drawings which just add to the flow of the story, and with Roald Dahl`s magical story telling skills this has to be a must read for kids both young and old. Five stars out of five of course, with the recommendation that if you have not already read it, you really should, it really is a champion of a book.

ISBN : - 0-14-037157-5
224 pages paperback
Published by Puffin
Amazon price from £3.99

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