"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" by Roald Dahl

I hadn't read this book in more than twenty years.  Man, is it ever still really funny.

I'm teaching literature for our local homeschool group this year.  Three different age groups: preschool through first grade, third through sixth grade, and high school.  It's been GREAT so far!  I teach twice a month, and we have been having a blast.  Yesterday, the third-through-sixth-graders discussed this book, and their enthusiasm was awesome!  And I'm not just saying that because two of the kids are mine :-)  They loved talking about the candy, of course, but I was impressed by how well they understood the characters.  We talked about motivations, whether anybody in the book was always bad or always good, and how Charlie changes by the end of the story.  Good stuff.

I actually read this book out loud to my kids over the past couple of weeks because I knew my first-grader would enjoy it too.  I did this crazy, high, squeaky voice for Willy Wonka that I regretted after like one chapter with him because it killed my vocal chords... but they got such a kick out of it, I kept doing it for the rest of the book.  My third-grader later told me her favorite thing about the book was Willy Wonka's funny voice, hee.

I think my favorite part of this book is just how very, very poor Charlie Bucket gets rewarded for being a sensible, kind, obedient boy in a super-fantastic way.  I remember as a kid making up all these stories about poor orphans getting adopted by rich people, or rich people going around buying up hotels and then letting homeless people live in them, and I know this book played into those stories in a big way.

Would anybody be interested in me doing a post about how I teach lit to our homeschool group, what books we're reading this semester, and so on?

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  G.  Good, clean, silly fun.

This is my 21st book read and reviewed for the Classics Club and my 6th for the Old School Kidlit Reading Challenge.