Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
by Roald Dahl · first published 1964
13% recommend83% neutral3% critical
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a 1964 children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. The story features the adventures of young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was first published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1964 and in the United Kingdom by George Allen & Unwin 11 months later. In the 2012 survey published by SLJ, a monthly with primarily US audience, Charlie was the second of four books by Dahl among their Top 100 Chapter Books, one more than any other writer. Time magazine i
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
Related books
2015–2026Matilda
Roald Dahl
Recommended by 7 · mentioned by 217 recommend · 21 mention7 recommend · 217 recommend
2009–2022James and the Giant Peach
Roald Dahl
Recommended by 3 · mentioned by 43 recommend · 4 mention3 recommend · 43 recommend
2018–2022My father's dragon
Ruth S. Gannett
Recommended by 3 · mentioned by 43 recommend · 4 mention3 recommend · 43 recommend
2015–2023Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
Roald Dahl
Recommended by 2 · mentioned by 72 recommend · 7 mention2 recommend · 72 recommend
2018–2026The pushcart war
Jean Merrill
Recommended by 4 · mentioned by 54 recommend · 5 mention4 recommend · 54 recommend
2020–2025The Berenstain Bears
Stan Berenstain, Jan Berenstain
Recommended by 1 · mentioned by 71 recommend · 7 mention1 recommend · 71 recommend
2016–2026The Witches
Roald Dahl
Recommended by 2 · mentioned by 62 recommend · 6 mention2 recommend · 62 recommend
2020–2023If I Ran the Zoo
Dr. Seuss
Recommended by 1 · mentioned by 191 recommend · 19 mention1 recommend · 191 recommend
Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
on “Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.” ↗…Pushcart War; Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH; A Wrinkle in Time; The Phantom Tollbooth; the Chronicles of Narnia (warning: heavy Christian symbolism); Bunnicula; Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle; Mr. Popper's Penguins; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; anything by Roald Dahl - Some "classics" can be considered middle grade (warning: some of these reflect racist and colonialist 19th and early 20thC patterns of thought): Robinson Crusoe; Peter Pan;…
on “Ask HN: How get started with reading books?” ↗…A pizza the size of the Sun Choose your own adventure books The Great Brain The Boxcar Children series Captain Underpants Roald Dahl books: The BFG, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The Twits, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory/The Great Glass Elevator (not as good) My Side of the Mountain No More Dead Dogs The Secret Garden Bridge to Terabithia (Deals with death, a little older) The Lion, the witch, and the wardrobe Across…
on “The original “Bambi”” ↗99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
Had you ever heard of these six books before today? Have you ever read them? How many were sold? We've been sanitising kids books for decades now. What version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory do you own? The original with actual African slaves and the colonialist rescue narrative, or the later version with Oompa Loompas and the colonialist rescue narrative? What version of Edward's Sneeze…
on “Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay” ↗…characters or superfluous details that are archaic. We are not loosing a literary gem by dropping the cheap "Wong number" joke from the Great Glass Elevator. It's not like this is some new thing, either. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was edited after publishing by Roald Dahl himself, because having Oompa Loompas be enslaved pygmies from deepest darkest Africa is kinda shitty.
on “Roald Dahl ebooks remotely updated to censored versions after purchase” ↗I don't hear the author complaining about the loss of the first edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This is where Dahl bowed to early 70s wokery and erased the oompa-loompas' true identity as African slaves who would dribble for cocoa beans. Film adaptations have struggled with the fact that oompa-loompas…
on “The rewriting of Roald Dahl is an act of cultural vandalism” ↗A couple of things jump out: 1. Dahl had already made changes to the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The early editions had African pygmies as his free labour. I don’t think the world was “woke” back then. 2. This is being done by a corporate publishing house in order to maximise the revenue of one…
on “Roald Dahl: Rishi Sunak joins criticism of changes to author's books” ↗…book, one of my favorite Dahl books. Matilda - Reading this as an adult, it was not nearly as fun as when I was a kid, however my son loved it. The Fantastic Mr. Fox - Fun and easy read for the kids. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Pretty decent book. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator - Terrible. Absolutely terrible.
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?” ↗…background. Dahl going to school in the 30's got the chance to taste all these chocolates (Sweets/lollies) as a tester for Cadbury resulting in a sweet tooth. [0] These stories are told in "Boy" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". Interesting facts: Dahl got the cane for putting a dead mouse in a jar of gobstoppers while at Cathedral School, Llandaff. Credited with creating the word, ^Gremlin^. [1] Dahl collected the silver…
on “Why the 1930s were a golden age for chocolate (1996)” ↗I've been going through Roald Dahl with my 5-year-old and it's been delightful. It has kind of made me want to do my own audiobook recording of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. James and the Giant Peach was a hit, of course, as was Matilda. We're doing The Witches right now, which I had never read as a kid. It's kind of at the edge of what my son finds too scary, though. My…
on “Drug Discovered to Regenerate Lost Teeth” ↗It’s interesting that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has been edited before — “de-negroed”, in fact, according to Dahl. It forces me to wrestle with that uncomfortable feeling that I find these edits off-putting, yet the so-called “original” version I…
on “Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books” ↗…being edited to remove offensive language. It may be pointless and stupid in many instances – but it's not the sign of some incoming cultural apocalypse. I can easily think of less recent examples: * Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The book was edited (within Dahl's lifetime) to change the depiction of the oompha loompas as black slaves. * Biggles. The Wikipedia article mentions that "...later editions had to be somewhat edited…
on “Roald Dahl publisher announces unaltered 16-book ‘classics collection’” ↗Then you need to stop reading Dahl, because he rewrote his own books as part of the culture war. In his original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Oompa-Loompas were African Pygmies. The NAACP complained, and Dahl rewrote them in 1973 to be white-skinned. In the 1971 movie they were portrayed as orange-skinned, and in the 2005 movie as brown.…
on “Penguin to publish 'classic' Roald Dahl books after backlash” ↗Funny that I can get a paper copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, for which I own all the rights, in perpetuity, and can resell or gift it as I wish, for $5.94, but a digital "license", which gives me no rights and can disappear at any moment, and I can not do anything…
on “Roald Dahl ebooks remotely updated to censored versions after purchase” ↗