09/13/2026
📚 Happy Roald Dahl Day!
Dahl is probably one of the more controversial children's authors featured on this page. Parents either love him or hate him, and to be fair, the ones who hate him have good reasons.
His work is dark. Parents die, aunts and teachers are cruel, the humor runs on revenge, and there's quite a bit of name-calling. The children in his stories outwit and defy the adults around them. And Dahl himself wasn't always an admirable man.
So where do we land in our home? We're pro-Dahl.
Underneath the mischief and mayhem runs one of the clearest moral universes in children's books. Good is good. Evil is evil. And the wicked always get their comeuppance, often from their own vices.
As for his heroes, they’re worth admiring. Charlie is humble and honest. Matilda is brilliant and brave. James is kind and courageous. Sophie is loyal and quick-witted. These are children worth looking up to.
But what about the darkness?
I treat it the way I treat the darkness in fairy tales. Real danger and difficulty are what make courage mean something. And children are often more capable of facing these deeper themes than we give them credit for.
Where's the proof?
It’s found in the way Dahl resonates with kids. His work turns reluctant readers into kids who beg for one more chapter faster than nearly any author, alive or dead.
Case in point: I had to buy the audiobook of Matilda earlier this year because I couldn't keep up with how much my daughter wanted to read it. She's listened to it start to finish half a dozen times, and I've read it aloud three times over.
Any author who has that effect is welcome in my home.
Where does your family fall, pro or anti-Roald Dahl?
