After a bit of a hiatus over the Christmas period, Ben — accompanied by me and Louise — has restarted his Roald Dahl odyssey with The BFG.
We stopped for well over a week after a couple of chapters because, as far as we could tell, Ben was afraid of the man-eating giants. Here’s my tip on selling the book to the young, male and trepidous: Skip to the end and show them the pictures of the helicopters.
We finished the book tonight. This read was particularly challenging for me because I decided to give all the characters accents. Usually Ben stops me doing this and asks that I read in my “proper voice” but this time he didn’t seem to notice.
In my production, the heroine Sophie was played by Louise. The BFG was played by Justin Lee Collins. Ray Winston voiced all the other giants. The heads of the army and navy were played by Stephen Fry, in best Blackadder Goes Forth style, and the Queen was played by The Queen.
The chapter The Plan was probably the trickiest bit, heavy with dialogue between five different characters. I must admit that on ocassion a few of the characters’ accents got swapped but Ben didn’t seem to notice. It’s nice to have a forgiving audience.
Tags: books