Danny the Champion of the World... the novel...

I borrowed this book from the library. I thought I had finished all of Roald Dahl's books. But I was clearly mistaken. Well, Roald Dahl's books are always so funny!

Danny's mother died suddenly when he was only four months old and from then on he lived with his father in a caravan, behind the filling station. By the time Danny was seven years old, he was able to take apart and put back together a motor. Danny's father owned the filling station, and it was the only piece of land for miles around that was not owned by a wealthy but unpleasant man called Mr. Victor Hazell. When Danny was nine years old he woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't find his father. His father had gone to poach pheasants from Hazell's Wood. Danny's father then let Danny in on a secret of poaching: pheasants love raisins and it’s a perfect trap in which to catch a pheasants. Another trick that Danny's dad taught him was the technique called, Horse-Hair Stopper. You have to stick in a horse's tail hair with a raisin and when the pheasant tries to swallow it, it cannot go down its throat. As a result, the raisin will stick to the inside of its throat and will not be able to fly off. One evening, Danny's father went poaching and promised to be back by 10:30 p.m. Danny, waking later that night, discovers his father's absence. Fearing the worst, he sets out into the woods to find him. He found him trapped down a hole with a broken ankle, and rescued him.

While Danny's father is recovering from his injury, they hear that Mr. Hazell's pheasant-shooting party is approaching. They decide to humiliate him by luring all the pheasants away from the forest. Danny suggests that they should put the contents of sleeping tablets inside raisins and make the pleasant groggy, and when this is done they hide the sleeping pheasants in a local woman's house by taking a taxi. The woman then brings all the sleeping pheasants in a baby cradle. As she is walking toward them, the pheasants began to wake up and fly, but they fall back down. An angry Hazell arrives at the filling station just as the pheasants are waking up, causing an argument.

All the pheasants flew away because the sleeping pill had worn off. But Doc Spencer shows them six pheasants still asleep from eating too many raisins inside the caravan. So, in the end, they had pleasants to eat!

Rating: 8/10
Genre: Adventure