Roald Dahl’s The Gremlins is a wartime story for 9 year olds about the small horned creatures the RAF blamed when their aeroplanes fell apart.<\/p>\n
It opens in the Battle of Britain, with wreckage scattered across the countryside from Thanet to the Severn and the chestnuts ripening. A pilot called Gus is chasing a German bomber at 18,000 feet when he glances at his wing.<\/p>\n
Standing on it is a man six inches high with horns and a large round face, wearing shiny black suction boots, drilling holes in the wing with a drill nearly as big as he is.<\/p>\n
Gus puts the aeroplane down on the Dover to London road. His sergeant counts four bullet holes. Gus tells him they are not bullet holes.<\/p>\n
Then the gremlins stop hiding. One walks across the mess table and shoulders a pint of beer onto the floor, just to make the point to a pilot who said he had never heard of them.<\/p>\n
The reason they do it is the best part. Long ago there was a beautiful green wood in the North where they lived, and then humans came with trucks and cut it all down, rolled the ground flat and built an aeroplane factory on it. So the gremlins swore to follow the big tin birds wherever they went.<\/p>\n
It is very funny and quite strange. Female gremlins are fifinellas and the babies are widgets. They eat used postage stamps, and transatlantic airmail ones are the treat. High above thirty thousand feet there are spandules, covered in black hair, who cling to the wings and breathe ice onto them.<\/p>\n
Worth knowing that this is a real war and Dahl does not soften it. Gus is shot down twice. The second time his aeroplane catches fire and he bails out and spends three hours in the Channel. Later he takes two bullets, one through the kneecap and one in the ankle, and lies in a small dark hospital room for weeks with his leg in a splint before he is told he will never fly again.<\/p>\n
The tone stays light and there is no death on the page, but a permanent injury and a man losing the thing he loves is the hinge of the story. A child who takes that sort of thing to heart may need company for it.<\/p>\n
The file itself is rough, by the way. There are typos, a pilot who changes name for one line, and the odd missing word.<\/p>\n
Fantastic Mr Fox is the same author on much the same idea, for a reader who enjoys small creatures getting their own back. Three farmers dig the fox family out of the hill they live under, and Mr Fox is not remotely sorry about any of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Roald Dahl’s The Gremlins is a wartime story for 9 year olds about the small horned creatures the RAF blamed when their aeroplanes fell apart. It opens in the Battle of Britain, with wreckage scattered across the countryside from Thanet to the Severn and the chestnuts ripening. A pilot called Gus is chasing a German […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10527,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":7393,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Fantastic Mr Fox","lr_seo_hook":"Dahl's wartime tale of the little men who wreck RAF aeroplanes."},"book_tag":[1049],"age_group":[24],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[842],"class_list":["post-9109","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-war-books","age_group-books-for-9-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-roald-dahl"],"yoast_title":"The Gremlins by Roald Dahl | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"Dahl's wartime tale of the little men who wreck RAF aeroplanes. For ages 9+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n