The best of Roald Dahl centenary publishing

The Bookseller's children's previewer Fiona Noble chooses her favourite books published to mark the Roald Dahl 100.

Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake (illus)
The BFG Film Tie-in
Puffin, £6.99, Pb, 9780141361321
Director Steven Spielberg is at the helm and Mark Rylance stars as the Big Friendly Giant—and it has a bigger budget than “Avatar”. “The BFG” (trailer below) looks spectacular, and it is set to be summer’s hottest blockbuster movie. The film tie-in edition features a new foreword by Lucy Dahl, plus exclusive new activities, including a BFG draw-along with Quentin Blake.

Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake (illus)
Matilda
Puffin, £6.99, Pb, 9780141365466
The core Dahl fiction range got a vibrant new cover look in February, meshing Quentin Blake’s iconic artwork with a more dynamic font and design. “Surprising, edgy and fun, yet also instantly recognisable,” says Puffin. The same design will appear on new editions of the autobiographies, picture books and audiobooks.

Roald Dahl: A Marvellous Colouring Book Adventure
Puffin, September, £9.99, Pb, 9780141373546
From Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory to the BFG’s magical dream jars, colour and create 45 intricately illustrated scenes. Other activity publishing includes The BFG Gloriumptious Sticker Activity Book (June) and The Roald Dahl Scribble Book (September).

Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake (illus)
The Roald Dahl Centenary Box Set
Puffin, September, £100, hb, 9780141369433
The ultimate Dahl gift: sumptuous foiled hardback editions of his top 10 bestselling stories, presented in a stunning gift box.

Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake (illus)
Roald Dahl Treasury
Puffin, £19.99, hb, 9780141369228
First published in 1997, a new edition of this bestseller: extracts, stories, poems and memoirs. The perfect introduction to Dahl.

Roald Dahl Whizzpopping Joke Book
Puffin, £5.99, Pb, 9780141368238
Over 500 Dahl-inspired gags. his joke books are ever popular: Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Joke Book sold 24,000 copies through the TCM in 2015.

Stella Caldwell, Quentin Blake (illus)
The Gloriumptious Worlds of Roald Dahl
Carlton, August, £16.99, hb, 9781783122158
A colour scrapbook crammed with insights and background to his most famous works. includes previously unpublished material, artefacts and Dahl’s own editing notes.

Susan Rennie, Quentin Blake (illus)
The Roald Dahl Dictionary
OUP, £14.99, hb, 9780192736451
Both a fully functioning dictionary and a playful celebration of his love of language, this source of literary inspiration includes everyday vocabulary and Dahl’s own “gobblefunk”. Peppered with citations and illustrations from the books, plus word origins, rhyming words, synonyms and more.
 

Donald Sturrock
Love From Boy: Roald Dahl’s Letters to his Mother
John Murray, £20, hb, 9781444786279
From a nine-year-old boarding school boy to Second World War fighter pilot and diplomat and spy in Washington, Dahl wrote weekly letters to his mother for most of his life—and she kept them all. Here, over four decades of letters are collected for the first time, revealing his fantastical, often dark imagination and the emergence of his writing talent.

Ooutside of books, the BBC’s Dahl season has already begun. There are five episodes of “The Essay” on BBC Radio 3, where high-profile commentators looked at different aspects of Dahl. In mid-July there was the culmination of the “Blue Peter” Dream Big competition, judged by his daughter Lucy Dahl, with links to “The BFG” movie and, on 23rd July, BBC Two will show a new landmark documentary, “The Marvellous World of Roald Dahl”, which includes interviews with Sir Quentin Blake; Lucy Dahl; the writer’s widow, Felicity; and Donald Sturrock, his official biographer. “The One Show” is also running two short films about Dahl in July.