Roald Dahl Day

What the day is

Roald Dahl Day is observed on September 13, the birthday of the author, who was born in Wales in 1916 to Norwegian parents.

Origin and background

What makes the children's books work is a consistent point of view rather than the grotesquerie they are remembered for. Dahl wrote from inside childhood as a condition of powerlessness. Adults in his books are enormous, arbitrary and frequently cruel, the child protagonist has no authority whatsoever, and the plot supplies justice that the ordinary world does not. Children recognize this immediately, and a great many adults misread it as simple nastiness.

He was also unusually willing to invent language. His nonsense vocabulary works because the invented words obey English sound patterns closely enough to be guessable in context, which lets a young reader enjoy them without stopping.

Two difficulties sit alongside the work and are worth stating plainly rather than skipping. The first is the author himself. Dahl made antisemitic remarks repeatedly and publicly, including in interviews late in his life, and they were not ambiguous or a single lapse. His family and the company managing his estate issued a formal apology in 2020, thirty years after his death. Nothing about the books requires pretending otherwise.

The second is what has been done to the texts. In 2023 his British publisher issued editions with hundreds of alterations, softening descriptions of appearance, temperament and gender, which prompted a substantial backlash and a decision to keep the original texts in print alongside the revised ones. The argument is genuinely two-sided: the books contain descriptions many readers find cruel about bodies in particular, and editing a dead author to taste sets its own precedent.

His adult short stories are a different proposition entirely, and worth finding.

How to take part

• Read one aloud. They were written for reading aloud and it shows.
• Check which edition you have, since the texts now differ.
• Let children enjoy the horrible parts, which is the point of them.
• Do not tidy away the antisemitism when you talk about him.
• Try the adult stories if you only know the children's books.