On the afternoon of the day when her father had refused to buy her a book, Matilda set out all by herself to walk to the public library in the village. Mrs Wormwood was hooked on bingo and played it five afternoons a week. Her father went to work and her mother went out playing bingo in a town eight miles away. Her brother (five years older than her) went to school. Nearly every weekday afternoon Matilda was left alone in the house. "What's wrong with the telly, for heaven's sake? We've got a lovely telly with a twelve-inch screen and now you come asking for a book! You're getting spoiled, my girl!" "Daddy," she said, "do you think you could buy me a book?" The only book in the whole of this enlightened household was something called Easy Cooking belonging to her mother, and when she had read this from cover to cover and had learnt all the recipes by heart, she decided she wanted something more interesting. At the age of four, she could read fast and well and she naturally began hankering after books. The parents, instead of applauding her, called her a noisy chatterbox and told her sharply that small girls should be seen and not heard.īy the time she was three, Matilda had taught herself to read by studying newspapers and magazines that lay around the house. By the age of one and a half her speech was perfect and she knew as many words as most grown-ups. Matilda's brother Michael was a perfectly normal boy, but the sister, as I said, was something to make your eyes pop. To tell the truth, I doubt they would have noticed had she crawled into the house with a broken leg. But Mr and Mrs Wormwood were both so gormless and so wrapped up in their own silly little lives that they failed to notice anything unusual about their daughter. Her mind was so nimble and she was so quick to learn that her ability should have been obvious even to the most half-witted of parents. Matilda was both of these things, but above all she was brilliant. It is bad enough when parents treat ordinary children as though they were scabs and bunions, but it becomes somehow a lot worse when the child in question is extraordinary, and by that I mean sensitive and brilliant. Mr and Mrs Wormwood looked forward enormously to the time when they could pick their little daughter off and flick her away, preferably into the next county or even further than that. A scab is something you have to put up with until the time comes when you can pick it off and flick it away. They had a son called Michael and a daughter called Matilda, and the parents looked upon Matilda in particular as nothing more than a scab. Mr and Mrs Wormwood were two such parents. Occasionally one comes across parents who take the opposite line, who show no interest at all in their children, and these of course are far worse than the doting ones. Think I might enjoy writing end-of-term reports for the stinkers in my class. Recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both theĬopyright owner and the above publisher of this book. Or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, Publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this Printed in the United States of America by Arcata Graphics, Fairfield, Pennsylvania Library of Congress catalog card number: 88-40312 Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. "In Country Sleep" from The Poems of Dylan Thomas. Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint an excerpt from Illustrations copyright © Quentin Blake, 1988 Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Englandįirst published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1988 First American edition published 1988 Penguin Books |N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
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