Thursday, January 14, 2010

The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me


A Scholastic book Written by - Roald Dahl
Illustrated by - Quentin Blake
Image source - Amazon
Crossposted here

Has anybody ever imagined what would animals do to earn their living if they happen to come to human world where everything comes with a price tag? How can they use their uniqueness to their benefit ? This story deals with one such case.

The story starts with a small boy Billy longingly looking at an old grubber (sweet-shop) building because he had this cherished dream of owning a unique sweet shop which could house all kinds exotic sweets sourced from different parts of the world. But unfortunately the building gets sold to a new company - Ladderless Window Cleaning Company.

Curious Billy keeps looking at the building when he meets the owners of the new company. A self sufficient trio - a giraffe, a pelican and a monkey coming together to form a window cleaning company, who neither need any ladder to reach any heights nor any buckets to do their job. Quite an innovative method of cleaning windows. They invite Billy to be their business manager.
They are approached by Duke of Hampshire - the richest person in England to get the 677 window glasses of his huge palace cleaned. That was a big project for this new company and they manage to make an impression on the Duke with their display of cleaning feat and also by saving Duke's diamonds worth millions and millions of dollars. How? You have to read it to know how.

The duke is very impressed by how the work is done so efficiently and with minimum paraphernalia. And in return what they all get is unimaginable for them, even for Billy.

Truly, a wonderful piece of imagination. Very funny and exciting and the bonus is getting to know about some peculiar features of these animals. Roald Dahl is one of the famous story tellers of all times and true to his fame, he has weaved a wonderful and interesting story to grip the attention of children from one page to another.

13 comments:

Choxbox said...

An old favourite!

And if you are ever in London definitely go to the Roald Dahl Museum - we had BlueBubblers (from The Giraffe The Pelly and Me) at the cafe there!

SoulSpace said...

Dahl is my dahling!!
My daughter and I are great fans...
hers is Twits and mine is Enormous crocodile:))
Thanks

ranjani.sathish said...

Sounds very interesting...we have not tried Roald Dalh for our son yet. I should may be check this book out.

Poppins said...

Echo Ranjani. Time to pick one up! Thanks Vibha

Vibha said...

ChoxBox: Wow, Raghav and Medha would love to see Roald Dahl's museum but going to London is the only issue :(( These days we are going from one of his books to another.

ssstoryteller: we are reading Enormous Crocodile these days.

Ranjani: Sure, go for this one.

Poppins mom: Thanks. Enjoy reading.

Sheela said...

Oh, Vibha, I've been saving Dahl as my daughter just got into The Magic Treehouse series... but, this book makes me want to spring it on her right away and see her reaction :) Thanks for giving me the nudge!

Meera Sriram said...

Been wanting to intro Roald Dahl to my D for quite some time now....is this a sign?:) Thanks Vibha.

Praba Ram said...

Thanks for this beautiful review, Vibha!

The Giraffe, Pelly and Me was K's very first Dahl that she picked up and read all by herself in 2009. They did lots of RD at school in September -his birthday falls on the 13th - so it's called RD month, I guess!

utbtkids said...

Sounds like a real treat!

Whats with RD and boys and sweet shops/factories anyways?!

sandhya said...

My daughter picked up a biography of Roald Dahl from the library after having read most of his books. We learnt that most of them have been written specifically for one of his many children.The slightly macabre flavour of his stories was a tad unpleasant to me initially, but then I realised that it does not seem so to the tweens and teens whom he wrote for. His books for adults seem like a natural extension of this genre. Certainly a writer worth introducing to children.

Praba Ram said...

Interesting, Sandhya! Thanks for dropping by.

Can relate to your point of view. I felt uneasy reading his books aloud to my then kinder/first grader, a couple of years ago. We in fact decided to stay away from RD for sometime. Now my almost 8 yr old, reads his books to herself, and no concerns. She seems to have taken him well.

I also checked out a collection of poems by RD called Dirty Beasts - follow-up to Revolting Rhymes. My daughter found them very funny. Some didnt click with me though! :-(

Choxbox said...

Err.. I'm with your daughter P, as far as Revolting Rhymes go!

And looking at the current run of fantasy fiction in these parts (Eoin Colfer and Madeline L'Engle) I tell you RD is very gentle!

sandhya said...

I have found a book of absolutely "scrumdiddlyumptious delights" in Roald Dahl's words, called "Even more revolting recipes." I thought it would feature truly revolting concoctions in the style of George's marvellous medicine. But these are really lovely recipes for spitsizzlers, plushnuggets,pishlets,tummyticklers, boiled slobbages,gluptious globgobblers,grobswitchy cake,a plate of soil with engine oil, nishnobblers, tongue rakers, etc., which feature in his many books. The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me included.

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