Book Review #009 - 'Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator' by Roald Dahl [1973]
Title: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
Author: Roald Dahl
Genre: children’s, fantasy
Published: UK, 1973
Pages: 240 (large print edition)
Directly after finishing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I moved on to its sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. For years I didn’t even know there was a sequel! After picking this up at the library, I still had no idea what it was about. The blurb on the back was vague. Something about adventures and Wonka never being dull.
Very vague indeed.
It was a slow starter for me, despite it starting off straight after the last book, as Charlie, Grandpa Joe and Willy Wonka arrive at Charlie’s house to take his family back to the factory with them.
Charlie’s other grandparents become awkward and through them, the elevator gets stuck in space, where they are mistaken for aliens by some American astronauts and the President of the United States. Then some real aliens turn up and attack them all, leaving Charlie, Wonka and Charlie’s family to save the day. Then in an attempt to get his elderly grandparents out of the bed they have lived in for years, Wonka gives them pills that will make them younger. Overdosing then makes Charlie and Wonka take a trip to ‘Minusland’ to save Grandma Georgina and return her to her original age.
When I first mentioned my attempts at reading the Charlie books, my fiancé told me he was sure there was a 3rd book. There isn’t, but we both know where he went wrong now. This book does feel like 2 separate stories. For the last few chapters it takes a different turn when they finally make it back to the chocolate factory. It only gets brought back together by the letter from the president which almost feels tacked on to two separate stories to make it work.
As for characters, I do still love Willy Wonka in this book. Charlie is as meh as ever, but he does show how fast a learner he is with some of his lines. Grandpa Joe is pretty much side-lined. Charlie’s parents don’t say much until the ‘part 2’ of the book, but what is amusing is that Dahl points out all the time that they are ridiculously silent. Then there are Charlie’s other grandparents. Well, they have developed into quite irritating, selfish people. It’s like they replaced the children of the first book in terms of being bratty and annoying. They do everything they possibly can to be awkward and get their own way. In the end I was so fed up of them that I thought they deserved to be shrunken into babies/non-existence. But as it is a children’s book, such an ending couldn’t stand, and the grandparents must be brought back to learn a lesson and be satisfied with their original ages.
Speaking of lessons; the first book had a moral to tell the kids after each child met their fate in the factory and the sequel is quite similar. One moral that sticks out (after the whole ‘be grateful for what you have got/don’t wish yourself older or younger/be careful what you wish for’ one, I mean) is ‘don’t go fishing about in medicine cabinets and swallowing unknown pills’ which could then extend into a drug metaphor. So it is education/preachy as well as fun.
Overall, I thought the book was okay, just a bit of a let-down compared to the first one. Which is probably why no-one has bothered to make a film version of it.