Hey there lads' it seems to say, 'Love a girl? Here's what you can do! Lie to her, trick her, steal from her, make her obligated to you, then you get to be in a relationship!'Īnd that's not even touching on the subject that Mrs. And their matter-of-factness makes them doubly awful. Sure.īut his actions are fucking awful here. Hoppy? This lonely, shy man? Do I empathize with the fact that he loves someone but can't bring himself to tell her? Hell yes. Silver's pet of 11 years.ĭo I really need to explain to anyone that this is fucked up?ĭo I feel bad for Mr. And out of gratitude, she marries Mr Hoppy.

Silver's pet with progressively larger tortoises. Hoppy spends the next two months slowly replacing Mrs. Then he builds a long grabber arm of the sort you would use if you wanted to, say, steal someone's tortoise off the balcony right below yours.Īt this point I thought to myself, 'He's not doing what I'm thinking, is he? Then I flipped a couple pages, and told my son that it was bedtime and we'd finish the book tomorrow.ĭisappointed, he went to bed. Then he goes out and buys a hundred tortoises. So he gives her some bullshit he makes up, telling her it's a spell he learned from a Bedouin. When he heard the words your slave for life a shiver of excitement swept through Mr Hoppy. Hoppy gets all twitterpated hearing this, so he lies to her, telling her he knows a magic spell that will help her tortoise grow. 'I'd give *anything* to make that happen,' she says. She with her turtle, him tending his garden.) She's had Alfie for eleven years, and he's still tiny. The tortoise is named Alfie, he lives on Mrs. Silver, has a pet tortoise that she adores. He's terribly lonely and he's terribly shy. He loves two things, the flowers he grew on his balcony, and his downstairs neighbor. So let's talk about this book: Esio Trot. The fact is, what you feed your kids is important, and that includes what they put in their heads as well as what they put in their bellies. They should be held to a *higher* standard than other literature for the same reason that we take extra care with children's food. That's such bullshit that it's an insult to the word 'bullshit.' Kid's books should be just as good as any other books. A nickel's worth of story in a dollar-long book.Īnd don't you DARE say, 'Oh it's just a children's book.' Or 'Kids don't know any better.' Or 'You can't hold YA fiction to the standards of…' I watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and loved it.īut recently, my love dimmed a bit when I read James and the Giant Peach, a book that was a serious boatload of meh. I've always thought of myself as a bit of Roald Dahl fan. If you want the longer version, settle in.

E trot roald dahl