Status Updates From Two Classics by Roald Dahl

How edutaining! 🙃

There are so many layers of "What?!" in this scenario. Did this stuff actually change the past, so she's not just physically older, but was actually born centuries earlier? How did Charlie guess the Mayflower? He just assumed it must be a ship he's heard of? If she was on the Mayflower in this revised timeline, shouldn't she be living in America? How does she have a daughter Mrs. Bucket's age?

"This time I myself will supervise the giving of the medicine."

Unspoken: "Unlike last time, when I knew that you were taking too much but did nothing to stop it."

"You can't see Gnoolies, my boy. You can't even feel them...until they puncture your skin...then it's too late. They've got you."

Why did you take a small child on this mission?

"You'll be the first person in the world to change her father's nappies!"

That is not true.

Are you trying to convince them to take this stuff? Because if so, it's a bad strategy to repeatedly say "even though it does something TOO HORRIBLE TO MENTION."

Also, I get the sense that Wonka burns through a lot of Oompa-Loompas during his experiments.

"Who in the world are all these peculiar little men?"

Wait a minute, Georgina, and they'll sing a song shaming you for being bedridden.

It seems like very time that Mr. or Mrs. Bucket speak, the narration feels the need to lampshade how rarely it happens.

I guess we can add "unflappable" to Charlie's short list of character traits. Though it may have been that Dahl just didn't think to add "realistic fear."

Why are they not speaking? Okay, so Houston can hear them; they already know that you're there. For that matter, why did you break in when you KNEW it would end with them catching you? And why do they have devices to pick up noise inside the hotel, but not cameras?

I guess this edition only took out all the anti-black racism.

"Lancelot R. Gilligrass" is such a weird name to give the U.S. president, because it sounds so much like a name that an American would make up for a British character.

"Newspaper and television had been shouting about nothing else for the past six months."

Like, I'm still just kind of marveling at this world. All last book it seemed like everyone was obsessed with kids touring a chocolate factory, and now we're told that oh yeah, America has been COLONIZING SPACE at the same time.

So it's the 1960s, but Charlie's family can starve to death in a shack like it's the Great Depression, but also we have space hotels?

You know, when I watched the movies, it always felt like a stretch that Mike being obsessed with TV led to him getting shrunk by a teleporter. I get that that's how TV works, but still.

It occurs to me now that it would make more sense if Mike was obsessed with BEING on TV rather than WATCHING it. A desire for fame even ties into him repeatedly saying that he's "the first person sent by television."

That was a LITTLE funny, but I understand why the movie skipped this and devoted a scene to the Fizzy-Lifting Drink instead.

No, Violet has a good point. We're supposed to think that she's gross for taking that gum out and chewing it again later (and I'm not saying that's wrong), but kid who buy the Everlasting Gobstoppers will be doing the same thing. Why is one worse than the other?

"I always thought that a veruca was a sort of wart that you got on the sole of your foot! But I must be wrong, mustn't I?"

You know, Roald, the joke kind of loses something if you just have your character explain it like that.

This book is set in a world that's modern/realistic enough that Charlie has to go to school instead of dropping out to work in a factory or something, but also Dickensian enough that there's no school lunches or other social services to keep him from starving to death.