Monday, April 14, 2008

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Title: "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"
Author: Roald Dahl
Illustrator: Joseph Schindelman
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1964
Grade: 4-5 grade
Genre: fantasy, novel

Charlie lives in a small, two room house with his mother and father and each of their parents. Needless to say that this family was very poor. One day the paper announces that Willy Wonka will open his factory to five lucky people and their guest so they can see the factory and all the things that go on in there. The first two tickets were found by Augustus Gloop, an enormous, nine year old boy, and Veruca Salt, an obnoxious, rich, snobby little girl. On Charlie's birthday his family gives him a candy bar and everyone holds their breath as Charlie opens the chocolate bar, but is disappointed when there was no golden tickets. The third ticket was found by Violet Beauregarde, a gumchewer who talked very fast, and then the fourth ticket was found by Mike Teavee, a boy who constantly watched television. Grandpa Joe wanted Charlie to find that ticket so badly that he gave Charlie ten cents to go buy a candy bar. One day while Charlie is on his way home, he finds a dollar bill on the street and takes that a buys two candy bars and is going to take the remaining 80 cents back to his mother. When he opens the second candy bar, he finds the last golden ticket. Grandpa Joe was Charlie's guest that he took with him. When the ten people get into the factory they are supposed to follow all of Wonka's rules and instructions or something bad will happen. Augustus Gloop falls into the chocolate rivers and gets stuck in the pipe so now there are only four winners left. When the guests go to the invention room, Violet tries some gum that Wonka told her not to and then she starts to turn blue and get really big. She has to leave so now their are three winners left. Next they go to the Nut Room where a machine sorts out the good nuts from the bad. Veruca Salt sits on the scale and is sent down the bad nut shoot. Then there were two. They then went to the Television-Chocolate Room. In this room Mike is turned into a million little pieces. Then there was only Charlie and Grandpa Joe left. All five winners got a lifetime's supply of chocolate but Charlie won the whole thing. When Charlie is old enough to run the chocolate factory, it will become his!

I love Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I love the old version of the movie. I love how Charlie was the poorest of them all but because he listened to Willy Wonka he ended up the richest of them all because he got the chocolate factory. I loved how all the bad things happened to the others because they didn't listen. They were actually annoying. I think Roald Dahl is an amazing author. He is so descriptive in his work and he writes to wear it feels as though the reader is right there with the characters. For instance when Augustus falls into the river, I felt like I was there worrying with the rest of them. I couldn't stand Veruca Salt because she wanted everything! She was a spoiled rotten little brat!

I would definitely use this book in my classroom. I think that it would be a great book to do character maps and journals with. I could also let my students read the book and then watch the original movie and have them to do a venn-diagram comparing the two.

1 comment:

B. Frye said...

Could you comment more specifically on curricular connections? There are so many lesson plans and links to sites on the Internet...try to be as specific as possible about teaching connections. :)
And oh yeah, you just have to pull for Charlie...any connections to Harry Potter?