Well how do you do, and how do you do, and how do you do again! It's always great to find an excuse to revisit Roald Dahl's meisterwork "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". We've been eyeing up this luxurious and lovely pop-up edition for a very long time. Thanks to a certain dapper little classmate at Charlotte's school she now has it (thanks for the birthday pressie, H!) and it's every bit as chocolatey and great as we hoped it would be.
If you've lived under a rock for most of your life, feeding on the nutritious microbes there, you may not have heard of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" so we'll try and share with you the scrum-diddly-umptiousness of it, in potted form.
Charlie, a poor young lad, loves chocolate but Charlie lives in a tumbledown shack with his parents Mr and Mrs Bucket, and four grandparents - Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine, and Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina. Thus, poor Charlie can only pass by the huge chocolate factory near his home - belonging to a rather secretive chap called Willy Wonka, dreaming of mallow whipple delights and strawberry fizz bombs.
A competition is announced, and Mr Willy Wonka will open the doors of his factory for the first time to a select few competition winners. A golden ticket, hidden inside Willy Wonka's chocolate bars, will allow the lucky winners to embark on a tour of the factory!
With mouthwatering descriptions and utterly brilliant characters, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" is often imitated, never bettered - just like Mr Wonka's lovely chocolate and sweets. If your children are still a bit too young to sit through the full version, this pop-up version offers a neatly abridged alternative - packed full of the fantastic illustrations of Sir Quentin Blake, adapted from the original versions of the book.
Thoroughly delicious!
Charlotte's best bit: She still obsesses about poor Violet Beauregarde and her blueberry-ness. Aww!
Daddy's favourite bit: The Oompah Loompah songs, brilliant and funny.