JasonKoivu

I just discovered Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator was written the year I was born. Apparently a lot of my favorite childhood kids' books were written that year. 1972 seemed to be the year of the fanciful/magical and/or pastoral/nature-oriented kids' book: Watership Down, All Creatures Great and Small, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Frog and Toad #2, Earthsea Cycle #3, which might explain a few things about me...but which more likely has a whole lot more to say about where the American reading public's mind was at the time: fully ensconced in Vietnam and sick of it. It was time for a bit of escapism and Roald Dahl's books provided just that.

This is a sequel of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which picks up right were its predecessor left off...at least story-wise. It does not however pick up and carry on the same level of fantastical fun and frivolity, or at least I didn't feel quite as carried away with this one as I did the first. Perhaps it's because the shine has worn off a bit, the surprises have been sprung and now that the reader knows what to expect it all doesn't seem quite as magical. Oh well. Just the same, it's still a fun-as-heck book!