On 1 April 2006, the British theme park Alton Towers opened a family attraction themed around the story. The ride featured a boat section, where guests travel around the chocolate factory in bright pink boats on a chocolate river. In the final stage of the ride, guests enter one of two glass elevators, where they join Willy Wonka as they travel around the factory, eventually shooting up and out through the glass roof. [57] Running for nine years, the ride was closed for good at the end of the 2015 season. My grandfather really loved chocolate and he really loved these characters, and I really feel that those things combined carry through to the reader — or the viewer, for the films — in a really powerful way and have helped to make the work so timeless," Kelly concludes.

Charlie walks past the chocolate factory every day and smells the delicious chocolate. Later, he goes on to taste some of the delicious treats. Use this as a starting point for learning about different senses. There are a few differences between the movie and the book, but (channeling Reading Rainbow) you don’t have to take my word for it. However, the shopkeeper is also described as fat, and he protects Charlie when a mob descends on the young boy.As a result, the local economy is crap. And it's because of this that Charlie's dad can't get a decent job. What's more, it's because of this that his dad *loses* his shitty job, and his family is starving to death. Slightly odd story of virtuous poverty rewarded by the evil capitalist who caused the poverty by firing all his workers in favour of employing non-human immigrants. Calamur, Krishnadev (1 September 2014). "For Anniversary, A New Chapter Of 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' ". NPR. Archived from the original on 14 May 2017 . Retrieved 12 August 2016. Charlie’s grandparents were ‘as shrivelled as prunes’ and ‘as bony as skeletons’. Can you think of other similes to describe things?

Imagine that you could be sent anywhere in the world by TV. Where would you like to travel to? Why would you like to go there? How else could you travel there and how long would it take?

Personalized picks at your fingertips

But then things turn a bit queer. One by one, the children invited into the factory start dropping off and in the most interesting of ways. This is a fight to the finish and it becomes clear that there can be only one! Most of us remember our first Dahl book as a revelatory experience. The tone – both confident and confiding from the moment Charlie is introduced ("'How d'you do, how d'you do, and how d'you do again?' He is pleased to meet you") – and the brio, exhilarating and infectious. It is fascinating to see that whatever else came and went in the drafting process, that most vital and inimitable feature remained constant. "If you look now, you can see Mr Wonka quite easily," runs the opening paragraph of "Charlie's Chocolate Boy", followed by a breathless description of all that goes on inside the factory before finishing with "I am telling you all these things simply to show you what a fantastically clever chocolate maker Mr Willy Wonka was – and still is." And there your eight-year-old self is, right where Dahl wants you, hushed, hooked and hardly breathing for the duration.

For those of you who haven't read the book, let me underline this fact for you. Dahl takes pains to really detail the fact that Charlie and his family aren't just hungry and poor. They're destitute. Charlie sleeps on a mattress on the floor. In the winter they are cold, and they're starving to death. As with Roald Dahl's other audiobooks, this was a full production. The sound effects just made this book go from a 4.5 to a 5. Seriously! On 27 November 2018, Netflix was revealed to be developing an "animated series event" based on Roald Dahl's books, which will include a television series based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the novel's sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. [61] [62] On 5 March 2020, it was reported that Taika Waititi will write, direct, and executive-produce both the series and a spin-off animated series focused on the Oompa Loompas. [63]And in the process of these peregrinations, the disagreeable children mentioned above eventually face the consequences of their bad behaviour – always because of choices that they make while in the chocolate factory. When one child falls into the chocolate river and gets pushed up a chocolate pipe, Willy Wonka blithely assures the child’s mother, “Keep calm, my dear lady, keep calm. There is no danger! No danger whatsoever!...A most interesting little journey. But he’ll come out of it just fine, you wait and see” (p. 75). His cheerfulness during these passages from the novel is at once endearing and disturbing.