George's Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl

 

Title: George's Marvellous Medicine

Genre: Fantasy

Author: Roald Dahl

Illustrator: Quentin Blake 

Age group: 3rd-5th

Summary

This story is about a young boy named George.  George's parent have left him alone with his grandmother, the only thing George had to remember was to give his grandmother her medicine at 11:00 o'clock sharp.  George's grandmother is terrible towards George especially when his parents are not around.  George waits on his grandma hand and foot and is really at his grandmother's beck and call.  So George takes matter into his own hands and decides to whip up a wicked concoction with shampoo and dish soap and so much more vile things that will substitute for his grandmother's medicine.  So the time comes for grandma to take his medicine and George is in for a wild surprise.  Grandma takes the medicine and begins to grow like a bubble, then she deflates.  Then she begins to grow super tall and starts breaking through the entire house and just keeps growing and growing.  George is so nervous of what his parents will think and then his parents get home.  They do not believe that George made his grandmother this way so he feed the medicine to a chicken and the chicken goes through the same cycle as his grandmother and is now blown up to gigantic proportions.  George's dad is so thrilled about this and has George feed the medicine to all the chickens so they all grow and he can end world hunger!  Unfortunately George runs out of medicine and then goes through the process of trying to recreate his medicine.  But George cannot remember what exactly he put in the medicine and so all the animals start going through different stages of growing and shrinking.  And when George's grandma wants more of the medicine she sips George's test concoction and shrinks so much she disappears! And the story ends with George left thinking about all of the events that has happened today and the role he played during it.

Evaluation

This story is a very fast paced chapter book that would be very engaging for the elementary school level.  I think this book can be used as an introduction to literary elements such as figurative language.  This book is full with simile and hyperbole and alliteration and the story is so captivating that students will enjoy reading and learning.  Personally I do not believe I would use it in my secondary level classroom just because of the younger audience and level it's geared for.