The Missing Golden Ticket and Other Splendiferous Secrets (15 page)
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Authors: Roald Dahl
Who pushes Veruca Salt down the rubbish chute?
Why is the elevator so special?
What happens when Willy Wonka presses the UP AND OUT button in the elevator?
What does Mike Teavee look like when he leaves the factory?
What present does Willy Wonka decide to give Charlie?
Turn
here
for the answers—if you really have to!
“November is the middle of what we used to call the Christmas term. I had my first Christmas term away from home when I was eight years old. And it is also the month of fireworks and Guy Fawkes. Oh, how we used to look forward to the fifth of November at boarding school. . . We had jackie jumpers, Roman candles, crack-bangers, fire-serpents, big bombers, rockets and golden rain!
“There is a badger’s earth in the wood above our house, and this month the badgers are busy digging their deep winter quarters and lining them with dry leaves for warmth. Before November is out, they will have blocked up the entrances to their holes and will sleep the winter through. Like the badgers, the grass snakes are all starting to hibernate, but they are not as domesticated as the badgers. They have no real homes and simply hide themselves among the twisted tree roots underneath the hedges, and quite often they will coil themselves around each other for comfort. For many small animals, the approach of winter means the time to go to sleep until spring arrives again. It would make life a lot more comfortable if we could do the same!”
“The job of a children’s writer is to try to write a book that is so exciting and fast and wonderful that the child falls in love with it.”
Have you got what it takes to be an author? You might well have—it’s just that you don’t know it yet!
Believe it or not, Roald Dahl only found out he could write by accident. At the age of twenty-six he was “discovered” by C. S. Forester, author of the Captain Horatio Hornblower stories. From that moment, he never stopped writing.
But it’s not easy. These are the qualities Roald Dahl suggested you will need if you are going to become a writer:
“You should have a lively imagination.
You should be able to write well. By that I mean you should be able to make a scene come alive in the reader’s mind.
You must have stamina. In other words, you must be able to stick to what you are doing and never give up.
You must be a perfectionist. That means you must never be satisfied with what you have written until you have rewritten it again and again, making it as good as you possibly can.
You must have strong self-discipline.
It helps a lot if you have a keen sense of humour.
You must have a degree of humility. The writer who thinks that his work is marvelous is heading for trouble.”