Charles Davis sends “this story from the
Independent (UK) about how researchers preparing for an exhibit at the new Roald Dahl museum have discovered letters exchanged between Dalh and a real Will Wonka who was a postal carrier in Blue Hill, Nebraska.
The two enjoyed a cordial correspondence. In one letter, Mr. Wonka requested a plaque for his truck and admitted that he was teased because of the movie character. Still, he lived up to the name and handed out candy bars to the children on his route.
His letters are among thousands of papers which Dahl filed away with meticulous care. They will be part of the display when it opens in March next year at the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in Great Missenden, the Buckinghamshire village where the author and his family lived from 1960.
A new version of the movie is currently in production, with Johnny Depp starring as Willy Wonka. It will be titled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, same as Dahl’s book, and is scheduled for release in 2005.”
Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl has always been my favorite author. I can vividly recall my grade school class being read “Fantastic Mr. Fox”, and later, “James and the Giant Peach” by our school librarian. I almost couldn’t wait until Wednesday the next week when we’d get to hear a few more pages.
My parents raised me to have a love of reading from toddler-hood on. I can even now describe the layout of the childrens sections of almost a half dozen branches of the Fairfax County (VA) Public Library system. Just recently we borrowed a board-book copy of “Drummer Hoff” for my daughter, and as I read it to her, I felt like I was back there in one of those carpeted nooks discovering it page-by-page.
But Roald Dahl. What a cool name. So simple and yet so exotic sounding to white-bread-American me. I got “Danny, Champion of the World” for my 8th birthday. That was the book that kept me up nights with a flashlight under the covers. I already loved reading, but this was the book that let me know how much I loved reading, and that I would always love it. I cried so hard when he died in 1990.