The Magic Finger

Roald Dahl's The Magic Finger is a very short story for 5 year olds, told by a girl who gets cross and turns a whole family into birds.

What happens

She's eight. She lives next to the Gregg farm and she likes Philip and William well enough. But every Saturday they go off into the woods with their father and their guns, and she can't stand it.

She is careful to say she doesn't mean to do it. The Magic Finger has been with her all her life. She goes hot all over, the tip of her finger tingles, something like electricity jumps out of her, and then it's done.

It happened once at school. Mrs Winter called her a stupid little girl, and grew whiskers out of her face and then a huge bushy tail. If you're wondering whether Mrs Winter is all right now, the answer is no. She never will be.

So when the Greggs come out of the trees carrying a dead deer and laugh at her for shouting, she sees red.

What follows is Dahl at his quickest. Four ducks that can't be hit, however many times the guns go off. The same four ducks circling the house in the dark. And then a morning when Mr Gregg reaches out for his watch and finds he hasn't got any hands.

The whole family wake up tiny, with wings where their arms were. Four ducks the size of men, with arms where their wings were, walk in through the front door and shut it behind them. So the Greggs have to build a nest and sleep in it in the rain and try to eat apples without hands.

Your reader will get the joke straight away, because it's the kind of swap children invent for themselves. There's a lovely moment where the narrator rings Philip's house and gets quacking down the phone.

Do go into this one knowing what's in it, though. There's a dead deer in the first few pages. Sixteen birds are shot in an afternoon. A duck tells Mr Gregg he killed all six of her children yesterday. And there's a stretch where three ducks stand under the nest with the guns pointing up at the family, the two boys included, while they beg not to be shot. It's Dahl, so it's brisk and it isn't dwelt on. For a child who loves animals it may still be a lot. For a child who has already decided hunting is unfair, it will read like justice.

What to read next

If that's the part that lands, Fantastic Mr Fox is in there too. Three rich and nasty farmers sit outside a fox's hole with loaded shotguns, waiting, and this time you're on the animals' side from page one.