Common Sense Note
This well-written book is most entertaining when Dahl sustains one adventure (like the mouse-and-sweetshop caper). Dahl's drawings are lively, but the photographs and letters are somewhat less successful.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Katherine Kearns
From nine years of age on, Dahl attended boarding schools until trading them for work in Africa. Once he had gone, he wrote his mother every week for 32 years until she died. The early letters, many reproduced here, are signed "Boy".
Dahl's writing is, as always, unsentimental and often comic, but the story shows him being relieved of his innocence and forced into a world where mothers have no place. Dahl tells repeatedly of the cruelty of schoolmasters who constantly refined their caning techniques. He says, toward the end of the book, "You will be wondering why I lay so much emphasis upon school beatings ... . The answer is that I cannot help it. ... I have never got over it."
Some children will be saddened, and others enraged, by the unfairness of it all. One twelve-year-old was incensed by the vindictive, hypocritical schoolmasters Dahl describes, as well as by the miserably mean Mrs. Pratchett. These scenes clearly show the child's vulnerability in an adult world, but, unlike in most novels--such as Dahl's own--in this true story the abusers never get their comeuppance.
These are not reasons children should not read BOY, and they may be reasons children will respond to the book, which promotes the values of honest courage and determination. It also has lighter descriptions of teachers, such as the eccentric old bachelor, Corkers.
Plot Summary:
Roald Dahl's anecdotal autobiography focuses mostly on his unpleasant experiences at three schools. Between ages seven and nine, Dahl attended school in his Welsh hometown, where he and his friends declared war on the neighborhood sweetshop witch and were roundly caned by the schoolmaster.
Attempting to save her son from such beatings, his mother sent him across the Channel to boarding school, where conditions were even worse and the boys had only each other in a world of authoritarian and often violent schoolmasters.
At thirteen, he was graduated to Repton, where his athletic abilities and his size shielded him slightly from the general atmosphere of persecution, though he makes it clear that the headmaster was a genuine sadist. In this last section, Dahl also looks forward in time to his coming adventures in Africa, and allows himself some observations about how his childhood experiences shaped his later life.
Related Books:
Some children might prefer Dahl's sequel to BOY, Going Solo, which takes him away from school and into the more dangerous but understandable world of poisonous snakes and fighter planes. For a gentler memoir by a children's author, try Bill Peet: An Autobiography.
Rate It!
| Content | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CS | adults | kids | ||
Sexual Content |
 |
|
|
|
ViolenceDahl describes several canings; his depiction of the use of violence in school may shock readers. Dahl's doctor visits are nearly as frightening as the canings, as he describes not-so-minor surgery like removal of adenoids done without anesthetic. The s |
 |
|
|
|
Language |
|
|
|
|
Message |
|
|
|
|
Social Behavior |
 |
 |
|
|
Commercialism |
 |
|
|
|
Drug/Alcohol/Tobacco |
|
|
|
|
