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Boy by Roald Dahl

First read: Out loud to the class by my 5th grade teacher

I read this book by checking out the ebook from the library and read it on Libby

I was looking through my Libby tags and saw I had a lot of Roald Dahl notifications bc I went on a notify me spree months ago. I remembered this book and checked it out since it was available at one of my many libraries, then binge read it because it is very short and very good. Boy gets my first magical book designation because it is very well written as well as Real and fun and sad and feels very much like a childhood. Dahl wrote his mother a letter every week from age 7-20 and she gave him all of them when she died, so each story is peppered with pictures of letters he wrote his mother at the time. The letter motif makes the story magic because it feels like evidence that Dahl the author and Dahl the child are exactly the same man, and seeing his handwriting change as he ages in the story as well contributes to the reader's experience of a boy growing up. THIRD most wonderfully about the letters, is he was his mother's only son and signs many of them as 'Boy' which is the cutest thing I've ever seen. I want to own this book because I loved it the first time I heard it and remembered it very vividly, and reading it for the first time was even more special than having it read to me.