By: Roald Dahl
Illustrated by: Quentin Blake
Modern Fantasy
MIXBOOK
~The BFG is an exciting and funny book with lots of adventure and silly words. It is about a little girl named Sophie who is an orphan living in an all girls orphanage in London. One night she cannot sleep and looks out her window and see a big giant peeking in through windows and carrying a trumpet like contraption. She watches him take the trumpet and stick it in every window, then going on to the next. Suddenly the giant start heading towards her and he snatches her right out of her bed! The giant runs and runs with Sophie in his hand for a long time untill they finally reach giant country. Here he lets sophie go and tells her he is sorry he had to take her but he couldnt risk her telling people she saw her. This giant introduces himself as The BFG, The Big Friendly Giant. He tells her all about himself and how he catches dreams and blows them into peoples ears at night so that they can dream. Thats what he was doing in London. Sophie goes with the BFG to dream country to catch dreams for his dream collection. The BFG has thousands and thousands of dreams he keeps in jars with small descriptinons on the side so he can remeber what each one is about. The BFG also eats disgusting snozzcumbers becuase there is nothinge else for him to eat in giant country, but he does have a wonderfully tasty fizzy drink he loves called frobbscottle. Unfortunately, The BFG is not the only Giant. There are 9 other horibble giants that live in giant country with names like "Fleshlumpeater, Bloodblotter, and Childchewe," who eat "human beans" (humans). Sophie is so distraught of the idea of these terrible giants going off and guzzling human beans every night, she feels like she has to do something to stop them! Sophie and The BFG devise a plan to make a horrible terrible dream about the 9 giants going to England and guzzling up all the children from the orphanages. They will take this dream and The BFG will blow it into the Queen of Englands ear. When she wakes up from her aweful nightmare Sophie will be on her window sill to tell her it is true and not just a dream. Sophie and The BFG's plan works perfectly. The BFG, Sophie, and the whole English army head to giant country to trap the giants. The army men tie up the sleeping giants and take them back to London where they have dug a huge whole in the ground to keep them in. The giants are stuck here forever, eating only the disgusting snozzcumbers. The Queen builds The BFG and Sophie houses right beside hers. The BFG decides he wants to write a book about his adventures with Sophie, so he does, and thats how the book "The BFG" was written.
~The BFG was one of my favorite books growing up, and definately one that I would want to use with my fourth or fifth grade students. This book has a lot of intersting language in it. The BFG does not quite us proper English and makes up a lot of words. This is a great book to encorporate students imagination. What I would do with students, is have them all create their own dream jar. It can be filled with anything they like. Maybe, sparkles and blue water, or anything they want. Then they have to write a narrative story about their dream. The students also name their dream some silly made up word like one from the book.
~Another great thing to do in the classroom with this book would be to have students create a mixbook. The mixbook would contain a summary of the book and pictures that students felt went along with the summary. It could also contain some character information, or any way the student wanted to portray their comprehension of the book.
