Do You Know Who Sings Whizz Pop Whizz Bang? (George's Marvellous Medicine - Roald Dahl)

Member Name: jillmurphy

Product:	George's Marvellous Medicine - Roald Dahl
Date:	17/10/01 (720 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Pah.

Disadvantages: Bah.

George's grandmother is a grizzly old grunion. George dreads being left alone with her when his mother goes shopping on a Saturday morning and if you knew his grandmother you really wouldn't blame him. She does nothing but criticise and get him into trouble by telling tales on him to his parents. Half the tales aren't even true. George lives miles from anywhere, on a farm, and he hasn't many other children to play with. This makes it even worse when it's Saturday morning and he's charged not only with being good but also looking after the horrid old lady who's always so nasty to him and even making sure that she gets her medicine on time. This is what George thinks:

"George couldn't help disliking Grandma. She was a selfish grumpy old woman. She had pale brown teeth and a small puckered up mouth like a dog's bottom."

Heehee, but she really is awful. To George she's rather a witch.

At 11am sharp Grandma must have her medicine. It's a horrid, brown medicine that comes from a horrid, brown bottle, and, despite drinking a large tablespoon of it every day, to George it seems that it does Grandma no good whatsover. All the medicine means to George is that Grandma can accuse him of giving it to her at the wrong time, or from the wrong spoon, or some other petty and pointless complaint. It doesn't seem to make her a nicer, or better person at all. Suddenly, George has an idea. He'll make Grandma a medicine, a kind of kill or cure preparation, "one that is so strong and so fierce and so fantastic it will either cure her completely or blow off the top of her head". Into a huge, double-handled saucepan goes just about everything in the house that could possibly be used as a medicine - make up, toothpaste, paint, denture cleaner, hair remover and even the medicines for the animals on the farm including the one for the chickens which will, apparently, cure "FOUL PEST
" and "COCKERELITIS" (sounds perfect for Grandma, eh?). Together with some heartfelt incantations George cooks up his mixture on the stove, cools it down, and waits for 11am sharp.

Heart in his mouth, almost trembling with a delicious thrill of fear and anticipation, and with the special silver tablespoon kept especially for her George gives Grandma his marvellous medicine. Almost immediately the effect is startling. In fact it's more than startling, it's tremendous, it's fantastic, it's simply amazing. Grandma shoots into the air and clouds of steam start coming from her. "Owee," she screams. After that she begins to grow, and grow, and grow, and grow... Grandma gets taller and thinner visibly. As she stretches her head crashes through the ceiling of the living room and into George's bedroom, then through that ceiling and into the attic, and finally and most fantastically of all Grandma's head crashes right through the roof of the house. George watches in wonder. He tries the medicine on a chicken in the farmyard and it grows as big as a cow. Then he tries it to similar effect with the pig, the bullocks, the sheep, the pony and the nanny goat. When Mr Kranky, George's father, comes home he goes wild with excitement. Greedily, and without a thought for Grandma, he can see a bright future of food for all from these giant animals, and fortunes and riches for the Kranky family. He can't wait for George to make some more of his marvellous medicine.

And to find out what happens to Grandma, the animals and George's Marvellous Medicines Numbers Two and Three, I suggest you get yourselves off to Amazon with your dooyoo vouchers.

Why is it that Roald Dahl is so very popular with children? His books leave the libraries faster than anyone's, he has more entries in every compilation of top children's books than any other author. And yet he's also complained about more than most.
Ah, but then it's the adults doing the complaining, isn't it? And what would they know? I suppose the smallest of his fans love Roald Dahl for his lavatorial humour. He likes bottoms and so do they. Conor and Kieran, for instance, despite having a naughty mother who swears like a trooper, consider the ultimate in insult to be something like "you poo bag", or "you've got a tree growing out of your bottom". George's Marvellous Medicine is rude, it's funny, it's (to them) rather risque, and it's got bottoms in it. Little children like bottoms and they also like fantastic language. When Grandma drinks the medicine and, like Topsy, "just growed",this is what she says:

"'ALL RIGHT?' she yelled. 'Who's ALL RIGHT? There's jacky-jumpers in my tummy! There's squigglers in my belly! There's bangers in my bottom!' She began bouncing up and down in the chair. Quite obviously she was not very comfortable."

I don't imagine she was very comfortable, do you? And I'll bet Grandma's screech has sent countless little boys leaping about the living room pretending to have jacky-jumpers, squigglers and bangers in various parts of their anatomy. I'm not entirely sure exactly what Conor and Kieran imagine a jacky-jumper to be, and it doesn't really matter, but I've watched them doing some death-defying leaps from the sofa while declaiming, "ARRGGHHHH!! Jacky-jumpers in my tummy!!" so I've the impression they're fairly fearsome things. Oh, but better still is George's reaction to his grandmother's distress:

"'You'll find it's doing you an awful lot of good, that medicine, Grandma,' George said."

And there, in a sublimely funny, swift kind of role reversal I reckon you might find the other part to the secret of Roald Dahl's popularity. Most of us have had a grizzly old grunion in
our lives, haven't we? One of those mean and nasty adults, often in a position of power and responsibility, especially over a child - a relative, or teacher, or childminder perhaps, who isn't much of an advertisement for humanity. (I had Mrs Nolan, don't ask). Not everyone uses their authority fairly or nicely. And Dahl knew that. He also knew that much as they love humour, as they learn to know what it is, children also love justice. George's grandmother is a nasty old woman who uses her position to make George feel small and miserable for no good reason at all. She richly deserves her comeuppance, children know that, and if we're honest, so do we adults. The abuse of authority is A Bad Thing. So Grandma is lampooned, made into an hilarious but gruesome caricature, insulted in the best possible way, the "bottom" way and she gets her just deserts. It's not serious - what happens to Grandma is clear fantasy, it's a naughty, good versus evil fairy tale if you like - but the point is serious and I think it's one children grasp very quickly.

Of course, I could be completely wrong - Roald Dahl is an author who appeals so timelessly and so directly to children he's not really one for analysing. He's theirs, not ours, and that's as it should be. What do we know, anyway? Well, I know simply that George's Marvellous Medicine is one of my favourite Dahl books, that he, and it, make me laugh every time, and that he, and it, make Conor and Kieran laugh more than I do. I think that's enough. We're moving swiftly on to Danny, Champion of the World now, and then to Esio Trot, we'll maybe see you there.

I'll leave you with the book's dedication: "This book is for doctors everywhere". Scrumdiddlyumptious

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