Roald Dahl’s birthday was last week, and my mom sent me a list of inspiring Roald Dahl quotes. One of them came from this book:

“If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”

This quote inspired me to read this book, so when I saw a secondhand paperback for sale at the local library, I bought it in a hurry and binge-read the whole thing.

This short book is a fun (and gruesome) romp! It’s kind of the inverse of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: in that book, you meet the hero (Charlie) at the beginning of the story, and the force that changes his destiny (Wonka) comes in half way through. That book is all about goodness being rewarded. Here, you meet the villains (the Twits) right at the beginning, and the avenging force doesn’t come in to the story until half way through, and this book is all about evil being punished.

And oh, what villains! The Twits are nasty to each other and nasty to their animals. And the animals just aren’t going to take it anymore . . .

Fun and slightly morbid, 4.5 stars. ( )

The misadventures of two terrible old people who enjoy playing nasty tricks and are finally outwitted by a family of monkeys.

After reading a few pages I was tempted to put down this nasty, mean-spirited narrative, for good, but I kept slogging and it got a little better. The monkeys and birds don't make up for the Twits. ( )

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This was my first Roald Dahl juvenile read. Pretty funny and very irreverent. I'm sure I would have loved this as a child. ( )