The BFG
Reviewed date: 2009 Oct 23
208 pages
Little orphan Sophie wakes up during the witching hour. All is quiet. She sees a giant. The giant snatches her from her bed and carries her off to giant country. The giant is the BFG, the Big Friendly Giant. The BFG is the only giant in giant country who doesn't eat people. While the other nine giants run off every night to gobble up human beans, the BFG eats rotsome snozzcumbers, a disgustive vegetable that only grows in giant country. The BFG catches dreams, collects them in jars, and every night he sneaks off to England to blow nice dreams into the heads of British children.
The nine other giants are filthsome creatures who would love nothing more than to gobble up Sophie for a snack. The BFG protects her; they become friends. Sophie persuades the BFG to help put an end to the giants' grisly snacking habits forever. The BFG mixes up a dream about nine man-eating giants, a Big Friendly Giant, and a little girl named Sophie. Then the BFG blows the dream to the Queen of England. When the Queen awakes from this frightsome nightmare, she finds little Sophie on her windowsill, just as the dream had said. Sophie explains that the dream is completely true, and the Queen dispatches nine army helicopters to giant land. They tie up the nine giants, ferry them back to England, and drop them into a great pit. There the giants are fed snozzcumbers for the rest of their dreary lives.
The BFG is one of my favorite books. My step-daughters enjoyed it immensely. It's probably the biggest hit I've read to them. I did voices--a deep gentle voice for the BFG, a deeper harsh voice for the man-eating giants, a high little-girl voice for Sophie, my best British accent for the Queen. And I did some acting too, staring around to act out the BFG's part as he peered at little Sophie. The girls loved it.
Their favorite part was the BFG's fizzy drink, frobscottle. The bubbles go down, so it won't make you burp. Instead, the bubble come out some other place, in a glorious whizpopper! Giants is whizpopping all the time! I looked up a clip from the animated BFG movie on Youtube and showed the girls the whizpopping song. It was a hit with them. Not so much with their mother. :(