Roald Dahl - Boy

[Muddlingalongalone]

What are would you say this was suitable for?
Dd1 is 6.5 and has brought it home from the school library this week.
I can't remember it very well but feel like it was a dark in places and not sure if It's suitable.
Can anyone advise me please.

*age

I think he's a bit too young - there's the adenoids operation, the car crash where his nose is sliced off, caning, and that's just off the top of my head.
I'd probably suggest leaving that one for 3 or 4 years, although would be interested to see what others think

DS1 read it when he was six and was fine with it (and he can be quite sensitive to scary stuff...). I also read it at the same age. IME kids enjoy the darker parts of Dahl, they're a bloodthirsty lot after all.

Mine read it at 5, not sure how much he took away from it. He's now 6.5 and has re read it a few times and loves it. I think they don't necessarily appreciate all the gruesomeness of some situations when they're younger so it goes over their heads!

Dd2 read it a bit younger and liked it so much she read the next one, which I didn't think to look at and is definitely worse. She's generally fairly sensitive so I wouldn't worry too much.

I read it to DS at 6.5

I found it raised a lot of interesting conversations. E.g. the whole empty roads/no driver's licence needed/feeling really fast at 30mph/doctor performing surgery on kitchen table thing - lots of chats on how the world has changed!

I wouldn't have wanted him to read it by himself though. I find that casual violence from adults towards children, and children towards children, is the thread going all through the book, and it it's just described as 'this is what happened'. (I think there is a sentence or two saying 'in those times it was considered normal' but not much more in the way of contextualisation/discussion). I wouldn't want DS to learn that that kind of violence is normal/to be expected, so was glad to be able to discuss it with him as we went along.