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    Boy: Tales of Childhood
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    Boy: Tales of Childhood
    Unavailable
    Boy: Tales of Childhood
    Audiobook3 hours

    Boy: Tales of Childhood

    Written by Roald Dahl

    Narrated by Dan Stevens

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Where did Roald Dahl get all of his wonderful ideas for stories?

    From his own life, of course! As full of excitement and the unexpected as his world-famous, best-selling books, Roald Dahl's tales of his own childhood are completely fascinating and fiendishly funny. Did you know that Roald Dahl nearly lost his nose in a car accident? Or that he was once a chocolate candy tester for Cadbury's? Have you heard about his involvement in the Great Mouse Plot of 1924? If not, you don't yet know all there is to know about Roald Dahl. Sure to captivate and delight you, the boyhood antics of this master storyteller are not to be missed!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 26, 2013
    ISBN9781101632529
    Unavailable
    Boy: Tales of Childhood
    Author

    Roald Dahl

    Roald Dahl (1916-1990) es un autor justamente famoso por su extraordinario ingenio, su destreza narrativa, su dominio del humor negro y su inagotable capacidad de sorpresa, que llevó a Hitchcock a adaptar para la televisión muchos de sus relatos. En Anagrama se han publicado la novela "Mi tío Oswald" y los libros de cuentos "El gran cambiazo" (Gran Premio del Humor Negro), "Historias extraordinarias", "Relatos de lo inesperado" y "Dos fábulas". En otra faceta, Roald Dahl goza de una extraordinaria popularidad como autor de libros para niños.

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    Reviews for Boy

    4/5

    1,109 ratings77 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Roald Dahl is one of my favorite childhood authors. I love his imagination, as well as how in all of his books, his generosity of spirit and unconventional thinking shine through. His characters are simply, but completely drawn, don't patronize or talk down to younger readers and speak to the child in all of us. I've read most of his stories several times...except this one.Written in much the same style/tone, Boy is a compilation of Dahl's childhood memories grouped by age - his family, summer adventures, early schooling and boarding school as well as some family photographs. It's like reading a time capsule of growing up in Norway, boarding school in Britain and ends with a preview of his first job/experiences in East Africa post-school. It is a very charming and enjoyable snapshot of a fairly regular and non-remarkable boyhood in a very different era. His mother seems like a very interesting person--much of the book is a love letter of sorts to her, to childhood friends, and to formative experiences both painful (surgery without anesthesia! cruel headmistresses! canings!) and pleasurable (summer adventures! letters from home! and how they shape us into the adults we become.I think I would have really enjoyed knowing and chatting with Roald Dahl and maybe, in a life after this one, I'll get my chance. Highly recommended for Dahl fans.
    • 5/5
      Despite being a school librarian from 2002 until 2013, I had never read this book, and only one other Dahl book in the company of my then very little boy. I love memoir and had it in mind to read for many years. It didn't disappoint, in its depiction of the beauty of prewar Norway and the concurrent horrors of pre-war Britain. The man-to-boy sadism that is recounted by Dahl, inherent in the British public school system, is saddening and very disturbing. Mothers sent their boys off to this risky game of dominator-and-dominated were ignorant of its dark underworkings, or did so with faith that their own child would not become one of life's permanet 'fags', but would carry the work of the empire forward as a Boazer or at least equal to a Boazer (prefect). Are homosapien men inherently sadistic and violent? Do they inscribe this tatoo under the skin of their women, or onto their effigies, where it suits them - out of prurience?
    • 4/5
      After reading Dahl's amusing autobiography, which details his childhood and school age years, you can tell where he got the material for his own fiction work. Reading this book is like having Dahl talk to you face-to-face. Some parts make you laugh, some parts make you cringe, but by the time you reach the end you're ready to read the next installment in his autobiography - Going Solo.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this book. It's chock full of wonderful stories from Dahl's childhood, many of which offer keen insight into the man that would later write stories like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. A very worthwhile read.
    • 4/5
      All too short book of stories of Roald Dahl's early years.
    • 5/5
      Delightful memoir of Dahl's early childhood replete with adventures, misadventures, and villains. One of the underlying messages is that childhood is not all rainbows and roses (adults are "monsters' in more ways than one)
    • 4/5
      I've only read a few highlights by Roald Dahl (James and his peach, Matilda, a certain chocolate factory) but enough to know his work. This collection of biographical vignettes is written along the same lines, minus the manic edge and any fantastical elements. The main pleasure came from noting the inspirations for his fictional creations, some of which I probably missed for not having read more. He had a stiff British upbringing but also a Norwegian background that lent added flavour. Judging from this book it seems he was much more devoted to his present (enjoying or enduring) than giving much thought to his future, with little indication he was destined to become a writer. It's a brief memoir that only touches upon memorable highlights, written in a style squarely aimed at the same age range as his most popular stories, filled with playful pranks and outrageous injustices. As an adult reader I could still appreciate it and reminisce about my own standout memories.
    • 5/5
      This was an in-between-books book for me, but honestly, it was SO good. A partial auto-biography. Truly worth reading.
    • 5/5
      Short memoir that rather resembles Dahl's novels for children. Really humourous and well read by Robin Sachs. Ends rather better than most of Dahl's novels seem to.
    • 4/5
      These biographical stories from Dahl's early life demonstrate how he developed into the children's storyteller we know and love. Written in 1984 when Dahl was 68 years old, he has related some of the most memorable moments of his young life. A story such as The Headmaster that describes vicious floggings administered by a headmaster (who went on to become the Archbishop of Canterbury), is unpleasant and shocking, but it certainly fits with the memorable tag.
    • 3/5
      Some great stories here, notably
      Goat's Tobacco!
    • 4/5
      Roald Dahl's fiction for adults is often very dark and twisted. In his fiction for kids, that impulse is usually kept in the background, displaced in the main thread of the story by the sheer likeability of the main character, even if there are periodic signals that the world of the story has a lot of cruelty in it. Boy, Dahl's memoir of his childhood, explains a lot of this - his remembered youth consists of wrenching losses, exile to a series of dreadful boarding schools, and brutal medical procedures. It is told with panache and humor, which carry the story along brightly over an undercurrent of old pain. I haven't read a biography of Dahl, but suspect it would be a revelation to compare Dahl's own selective memory, arranged in Boy for narrative impact, to a well-researched, more objective account.
    • 3/5
      To this day I remember Dahl's descriptions of the candies he enjoyed and how, after an accident, his nose literally hung by a thread of skin from his face. People have a very visceral reaction this book, with good reason.
    • 4/5
      'Boy' is easily one of my favorite auto-biographies and not just because Roald Dahl is one of my all-time favorite authors. I have always loved the eccentric and unconventional nature of Dahl's tales, the horrid adult characters and the heroic, young main characters. Roald Dahl was a fortunate child, fortunate that he wasn't killed many times by his awe-inspiring (mis-) adventures.
    • 5/5
      Love this wonderful memoir of Dahl's life starting when he was born in Wales to Norwegian parents until he went to Africa to work for the Shell out company. He writes such funny anecdotes about the awful schools he went to, medical ailments he had, and lovely family trips to Norway. He seems to have such a clear memory of particular events! It reads like one of his novels when he describes the horrid candy shoppe lady or the the extremely unfair headmaster. I would definitely share parts of Boy as a read aloud when doing a Roald Dahl unit - it certainly helps children to know where he might have gotten his ideas.
    • 4/5
      A very funny book, that had me giggling and cringing at the cheeky stories of Roald Dahl's childhood. It makes me want to go back and reread the rest of his books, both the children's and adult works. I forgot how much I loved his short stories in particular.
    • 5/5
      This was the first autobiography I read. It was in Dahl's easy to read writing and filled with the adventures of his childhood. It has stories from when kids were still whipped by school teachers and there were entire stores dedicated purely for candy needs and desires (two ends of the spectrum, eh?) It was a fun and easy read.
    • 3/5
      A memoir not an autobiography!
    • 4/5
      I love this endearing account of Roald Dahl's childhood which is almost as entertaining as his novels.
    • 3/5
      Roald Dahl's memories of childhood written with a younger audience in mind is an interesting reading experience as an adult. His memoirs are largely brief sketches and while they're evocative I'm not sure I'd have enjoyed this book any more if I had been a child when I first encountered it. It's always fascinating to see what life was like a century ago but Dahl's memories weren't ones that charmed me, by and large. YMMV.
    • 4/5
      I remember having read this years ago, and I think I enjoyed it more then. It was still a very interesting autobiography and I'd like to read more of his life from where it ended.
    • 4/5
      I think this is the first memoir that I read as a child!

      I picked it up, thinking it was fiction, and was quite sad when I realised it wasn't. When I was little, I had an idea that non-fiction was boring. (Or, at least, it was a lot less interesting than fiction.)

      But I stuck with it and ended up loving it. I think Roald Dahl wrote a really accessible memoir for children. I felt it was really relevant to me at the time and I thought none of the sections were too long, and it was really interesting for the most part.

      I enjoyed reading about Roald Dahl's life, particularly his life at school. I appreciated his honesty, his frankness and his openness when talking about the more serious things that happened when he was young. I felt respected as a reader, as I always do when I read his books.

      But most of all I loved his sense of humour, I thought the novel was a really good pace, and I love how compassionate he can be to his reader.
    • 5/5
      While I’ve never been a fan of Roald Dahl’s fiction, “Boy” is one of the finest books I’ve ever read. Detailing his youth in the UK and holidays in Norway, Dahl writes with humour and pathos, recalling key moments of his early life and showing how the young boy became one of the most popular writers of the twentieth century. Whether it’s slipping a dead mouse into a jar at a lollie shop owned by a horrid old women (and his subsequent caning with said horrid old woman watching on sadistically), his holidays in Norway, his boarding school experience and, most importantly, his mother, you feel transported back to his youth and made me itching to read his follow-up “Going Solo”.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I loved this book. It was an excellent collection of memories from Dahl's childhood.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      A book I've been meaning to read for sometime and a lovely glimpse into the boy behind the man behind the author. It shows that many of his much loved characters originate from real people of his childhood. I love the mental picture he creates of the archetypical Matron at his first boarding school. Speaking of her enormous bosom he writes, "....it was like a battering-ram or the bows of an icebreaker..." The writing's in keeping with Dahl's easy style with many a wry smile throughout. This is part one of his autobiography and finishes as he's about to depart for his first job in East Africa. I'm keen to read part two - Going Solo.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
       Dahl's childhood was rather interesting. His time in boarding school certainly explains the nature of many of his books.
    • 5/5
      Boy covers Dahl’s family life from before his birth until he leaves school – he states that it’s not an autobiography but rather a collection of stories about his life. Dahl was born in Wales to Norwegian parents – his father had become wealthy after starting his own business and Dahl led a pretty idyllic childhood.

      This memoir is packed full of photographs, drawings and anecdotes – all in Dahl’s relaxed conversational tone. In one incident Dahl describes having his adenoids taken out on a table at the doctor’s surgery with no anaesthetic - ouch! Many of his tales made me chuckle out loud. For instance, the time when the family holidayed in Norway and he put goat droppings in his sister’s boyfriend’s tobacco (probably funnier than it sounds!).

      It’s not without its bleaker side too. Dahl’s sister died of appendicitis when he was just three years old, and his father died weeks later of pneumonia. His mother thought of returning to Norway with her children, but his father had wanted the boys to receive an English education so the family stayed. Dahl attended public schools – first a preparatory school in Wales when he was seven, transferring to boarding school in England at the age of nine and then at 12 moving to Repton in the Midlands. His time at these schools was not always happy – the masters favouring corporal punishment, but there were some good times (notably an incident referred to by Dahl as The Great Mouse Plot).

      After Repton, Dahl joined the company Shell as a trainee, and this is where the book ends. I think whether you are young or old you will find something for you in this excellent book and I’m very much looking forward to reading the second part, Going Solo.
    • 4/5
      Normally I would only give this about three stars, but I remember being fascinated by this book as a child. Now I think that there's very little real content -- I read it while my girlfriend was having dinner, for god's sake, and she didn't take that long, not even as much as an hour I'd say -- but of course what there is is well written and fun, and you can see the seeds of Roald Dahl's books in his autobiography. Not just the big ideas, but the sense of fun and even the way he describes things.

      It's also fun because he includes photographs and letters and other such bits and pieces of his life.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed Dahl's memoir of his childhood. Except the parts about getting caned for tiny infractions at English boarding school. Ow! I've read little of his fiction, but liked his style here.
    • 5/5
      This book and its sequel were so wonderful I went on a Roald Dahl reading spree for around a month. I wish he could have written about other peoples' lives as well.