ISBN: 978-0142410318
Like Oliver Twist before him, and Harry Potter since, the odds are stacked against Charlie Bucket. Poor, worried, and well aware of the injustices in the world, he goes through life quiet, lonely, and a bit sad. Unlike Oliver and Harry, however, Charlie has the support of a loving family, including four grandparents who never leave their bed (and provide comic relief). Charlie’s hometown is dominated by the presence of Willy Wonka’s mysterious chocolate factory, a place where “Nobody ever goes in—and nobody ever comes out.”
Like Oliver Twist before him, and Harry Potter since, the odds are stacked against Charlie Bucket. Poor, worried, and well aware of the injustices in the world, he goes through life quiet, lonely, and a bit sad. Unlike Oliver and Harry, however, Charlie has the support of a loving family, including four grandparents who never leave their bed (and provide comic relief). Charlie’s hometown is dominated by the presence of Willy Wonka’s mysterious chocolate factory, a place where “Nobody ever goes in—and nobody ever comes out.”
The town and the world are thrown into an excited uproar when it is announced that Wonka’s factory will open and five lucky visitors will be taken on a tour. To determine who will enter the factory, five golden tickets have been hidden inside Wonka bars. The race for golden tickets is an exciting beginning to this story, but the real fun begins when Charlie, along with his Grandpa Joe and four other children, enter the factory and meet the peculiar Willy Wonka. Readers will delight in the descriptions of the candy in the factory (eatable marshmallow pillows, fizzy lifting drinks, everlasting gobstoppers), and in the fates that befall the not so pleasant children Charlie meets.
This book was criticized when it was first published for being too nasty, and for containing unflattering portraits of children in competition with each other and meeting bad ends. That was pre-Hunger Games, of course, so those issues are perhaps less of a concern in the contemporary world of tween and YA literature. While film adaptations of books vary in quality, both Charlie movies—starring Gene Wilder (1971) and Johnny Depp (2005) are fabulous. Want to start a tween book-into-movie club? Here’s your first selection. Read, watch, enjoy.
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