We shouldn’t be, but we still are because times haven’t quite changed enough. “We are surprised by Matilda because there aren’t many modern female characters like her. She’s for justice.”Ĭhildren’s fiction continues to be dominated by male characters because publishers wrongly think boys don’t like to read books about heroines, she says – and this continues to make Matilda appear fresh and relevant. She’s not a sap, she’s not a goody two-shoes, she doesn’t take everything sitting down, she fights back. “Like Jo in Little Women and Pippi Longstocking, Matilda is an incredibly modern character. ![]() She has such belief in herself and is every bit as relevant and inspirational to children and adults today as she was 30 years ago.”Ĭhildren’s laureate Lauren Child agrees part of Matilda’s enduring universal appeal is that Dahl chose to write about a spirited little girl. Parents are more keen than ever to present aspirational female characters to their young children – boys and girls – and that is what’s helping Matilda stand out, because she’s a wonderful example. Matilda has been one of Dahl’s bestselling books since it was published in 1988, with 17 million copies sold worldwide, but sales have particularly spiked in the past two years and it is now outselling all of Dahl’s other titles.Ĭarmen McCullough, Roald Dahl editor at Matilda’s publisher, Puffin, believes this reflects a wider trend in children’s fiction: “We’ve seen a real movement towards more feminist publishing recently. Matilda at the British Library, as drawn by Quentin Blake. “It has been very special to revisit her all these years later and marvel at the woman she would have become.” And if you have been to so many countries in books, what could be more natural than to go and see them yourself?”īlake describes illustrating Matilda as a wonderful experience. “I am sure that someone who had read so many books when she was small could easily have become chief executive of the British Library, or someone exceptionally gifted at mental arithmetic would be perfectly at home in astrophysics. I imagined that for each version of our grown-up Matilda one of her extraordinary talents and achievements would have come to the fore and shown her a role in life,” he writes. “Since, as a small child, Matilda was gifted in several ways, it wasn’t very difficult. Cute happy bookworm wearing glasses next to red apple on stack of books isolated on white background. Happy Bookworm on Stack of Books Illustration. In his foreword to the new editions, Blake, 85, reveals he enjoyed imagining what Matilda might be doing now she has grown up. Cartoon library worms in eyeglasses reading book, sleeping and smiling isolated vector illustration collection. “Oh good,” Dr Matilda Wormwood is pictured thinking as a male library assistant brings her a huge pile of books: “Here’s one I haven’t read.” ![]() To mark the 30th anniversary of the first publication of the book, three of these sketches will appear next month on the covers of special collectors’ editions, showing Matilda variously as an astrophysicist, a world traveller and as chief executive of the British Library. Now, Roald Dahl’s Matilda – the most powerful female genius ever to be underestimated by a hammer-throwing headmistress – has been portrayed for the first time as a 30-year-old woman in a series of eight sketches by Dahl’s long-time illustrator and friend Quentin Blake.
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