(DLA Las Piñas GS LRC) September Book of the Month - Matilda

People around the world celebrate annually with a wonderful array of events (like storytelling, facepainting, tours, and Dahlicious Dress Up Day) centred around Roald Dahl's birthday on the 13th - the official Roald Dahl Day. This year, we're celebrating the commemorative and festive occasion by featuring one of the author's most famous books about a child who is gifted with magical powers and precocity but her wealthy, dimwitted parents are oblivious to her prodigious skills, viewing her as a foolish and idiotic girl instead.

The extraordinary five year old genius Matilda Wormwood is having a great time driving her idiot mom and dad crazy but it's different at school when there's Miss Trunchbull, the horrible two hundred menacing pounds of kid-hating headmistress who is a bully making life difficult for Miss Honey (Matilda's teacher) and her friends.

The novel won the Children's Book Award shortly after it was published in 1988 (around the same time of the birth of Dahl's fourth grandchild) by Jonathan Cape in London with 232 pages and illustrations by the notable Quentin Blake, and it has continued to delight audiences ever since. Early drafts of the story were very different to the one we now know. At first, the protagonist was a wicked girl who eventually used her powers to do good. In the end though, it became the magical story now known to children the world over. Matilda was the writer's last long children's book.

It was adapted into an audio reading by Joely Richardson, a film version released in 1996 directed by Danny DeVito who also starred as Mr Wormwood alongside Mara Wilson as Matilda and Pam Ferris as Trunchbull (the film went on to become a cult classic), and a two-part adaptation for BBC Radio 4. In 2010, The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Matilda The Musical opened to great critical acclaim.

The children's novel can be found at the fREADom hub at the Grade School Learning Resource Center of Divine Light Academy Las Piñas. In 2014, we're celebrating the 50th anniversary of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory so that's what we're featuring on the same month next year. Make sure to go grab something sweet and stay tuned!