“Later on my mother fixed me with a steely eye and told me she was confiscating my Meccano set for the rest of the holidays. But for days afterwards I experienced the pleasant warm glow that comes to all of us when we have brought off a major triumph!”
Charlie’s Chocolate Shop
At one time, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was going to end very differently! This was the ending in an earlier version:
The shop has been finished now, and it is the most beautiful chocolate shop in the world. It occupies a whole block in the center of the city, and it is nine storeys high.
Inside it, there are moving staircases and elevators to take the customers up and down, and no less than one hundred ladies, all dressed in spotless gold and chocolate uniforms, are there to serve behind the counters. They will sell you anything you want from a single little blue bird’s egg with a tiny sugary bird inside it to a life-size chocolate elephant with huge curvy tusks and a chocolate elephant driver sitting on its back.
And Charlie Bucket, coming home from school in the evenings, nearly always brings along with him about twenty or thirty of his friends and tells them that they can choose anything they want—for free.
“It’s my shop,” he says. “Just help yourselves.”
And so they do.
Isn’t it amazing how much a book can change before it is published?
Secrets are everywhere.
If you keep looking hard enough,
you might just find something new and
magical that has never been seen before.
Who knows? One day you may even
discover the secret of what it takes
to become as great a writer
as Roald Dahl!
Answers to Charlie’s Quiz
1 More than two hundred
2 Build him a chocolate palace
3 Through a special trap door in the wall
4 Because she chews a piece of the three-coursedinner chewing-gum
5 Five
6 Veruca Salt
7 She chews gum
8 Watching television
9 A Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight
10 A tailcoat made of plum-colored velvet
11 Underground
12 By waterfall
13 He falls into the chocolate river and gets sucked up a pipe into the strawberry-flavored chocolate-coated fudge room
14 An enormous hollowed-out boiled sweet
15 The Inventing Room
16 The squirrels
17 It can go in any direction, and visit any room in the factory
18 The elevator flies out through the roof of the factory
19 About ten feet tall and thin as a wire
20 The whole chocolate factory
*
THERE’S MORE TO ROALD DAHL THAN GREAT STORIES…
Did you know that 10% of author royalties* from this book go to help the work of the Roald Dahl charities?
This marvellous charity helps thousands of children each year living with serious conditions of the blood and the brain—causes important to Roald Dahl in his lifetime—whether by providing nurses, equipment or toys for today’s children in the UK, or helping tomorrow’s children everywhere through pioneering research.
Can you do something marvellous to help others?
Find out how at www.marvellouschildrenscharity.org
The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre, based in Great Missenden just outside London, is in the Buckinghamshire village where Roald Dahl lived and wrote. At the heart of the Museum, created to inspire a love of reading and writing, is his unique archive of letters and manuscripts. As well as two fun-packed biographical galleries, the Museum boasts an interactive Story Centre. It is a place for the family, teachers and their pupils to explore the exciting world of creativity and literacy.
www.roalddahlmuseum.org
Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity is a registered charity no. 1137409
The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre is a registered charity no. 1085853
The Roald Dahl Charitable Trust is a registered charity that supports the work of RDMCC and RDMSC
* Donated royalties are net of commission
• • •
For a complete list of this author’s books click here or visit
www.penguin.com/dahlchecklist
Puffin Books by Roald Dahl
The BFG
Boy: Tales of Childhood
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
Danny the Champion of the World
Dirty Beasts
The Enormous Crocodile
Esio Trot
Fantastic Mr. Fox
George’s Marvelous Medicine
The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me
Going Solo
James and the Giant Peach
The Magic Finger
Matilda
The Minpins
The Missing Golden Ticket and Other Splendiferous Secrets
Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes
The Twits
The Vicar of Nibbleswicke
The Witches
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar