02 October 2018 - Quentin Blake Imagines Roald Dahl's «Matilda» at 30
Sir Quentin Blake reimagines Matilda 30 years on
(BBC, 01/10/2018)
What would Roald Dahl's much-loved bookworm Matilda be doing today, 30 years after the book about her was published?
Illustrator Sir Quentin Blake has reimagined the heroine, who outwitted the vile headteacher Miss Trunchbull, doing what she might do best.
BBC News can exclusively reveal the illustration of Matilda Wormwood being depicted as poet laureate, "widely celebrated for her moving performance of The Trunchball Saga".
Matilda’s new adventures at 30: astrophysicist, explorer or bookworm
Donna Ferguson (The Guardian, 15/09/2018)
She was the quintessential young rebel who broke all the rules about how good little girls should be portrayed in children’s literature by standing up to bullies in the name of justice – and having a laugh at the same time.
Now, Roald Dahl’s Matilda – the most powerful female genius ever to be underestimated by a hammer-throwing headmistress – has been portrayed for the first time as a 30-year-old woman in a series of eight sketches by Dahl’s long-time illustrator and friend Quentin Blake.
To mark the 30th anniversary of the first publication of the book, three of these sketches will appear next month on the covers of special collectors’ editions, showing Matilda variously as an astrophysicist, a world traveller and as chief executive of the British Library. “Oh good,” Dr Matilda Wormwood is pictured thinking as a male library assistant brings her a huge pile of books: “Here’s one I haven’t read.”
Roald Dahl's Matilda at 30: A heroine who changed lives
Daisy Buchanan (The Independent, 01/10/2018)
It’s said that every good book is a self-help book, if you read it properly. It doesn’t matter how far a story lies outside your own experience if it contains characters you connect with, and words you can draw support from. Roald Dahl’s novel Matilda turns 30 today, and millions of readers have found comfort in its pages – and perhaps found themselves too.
I was eight when I met Matilda, slightly older than the eponymous heroine but not so old that I couldn’t see myself in her. Like Matilda, I was surrounded by bullies. I felt lucky that at least mine were playground-based, unlike Matilda’s family the Wormwoods, the acme of vulgarity (and if you love to hate the Dursleys, the Wormwoods will make you giddy with rage). Like Matilda, I was surrounded by people who thought intelligence was an inconvenience and a liability. Unlike Matilda, my method for dealing with my bullies was based on crying and hiding. I didn’t know there was another way, until this book came into my life and saved it. It was the Key Stage 2 Art Of War.
Matilda Statue Faces Down Trump to Celebrate 30th Anniversary of Beloved Roald Dahl Classic
Megan McCluskey (TIME Magazine, 01/10/2018)
A statue of Matilda Wormwood facing down President Donald Trump has been unveiled to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Roald Dahl’s beloved bookworm making her literary debut.
The temporary installation currently stands outside the town library in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire—where Dahl lived for 36 years—and features the young heroine from literature defiantly confronting a blustering Trump while standing on a stack of classic novels including Moby Dick and Great Expectations.