The 20th Annual Book Report Competition For

Secondary School Students

2nd Runner Up of English Junior Section

School: St. Paul’s College

Student Name : Lee Yat Sing

Title: Matilda

The distinctive way “Matilda” flows tells the readers that this is yet another one of Roald Dahl’s stylish books.It is humorous, imaginative, and yet, mysterious.

The story opens with Matilda, who is a shy, quiet, but exceptional girl.At the age of five, she had been knocking off double-digit multiplication problems and blitz-reading books written by Dickens, Bronte and Austen.However, her talent meant nothing to her idiotic, self-centered parents.Rather it was a nuisance.Her parents failed to recogniseher abilities or her existence.They cared nothing about her.Her father was a crook selling faulty cars, all her mother loved to do was play bingo, and her brother got all the attention.Her parents just thought that Matilda was a little girl that should not be heard or seen. They used her as an excuse for everything wrong that went wrong in their lives.Although Matilda had tried to counter-fight this, she failed to improve the relationship with her ignorantfamily.So Matilda could only seek solace in the grown-up books of a local public library.

When Matilda began to attend school, she encountered Miss Honey, her quiet and lovable teacher. She was the first person to recognize Matilda's brilliance and wanted to help Matilda reach her full potential.However, Miss Honey had problems of her own, and she wasn’t strong enough to fight against the Trunchbull, the insane headmistress.Matilda also hated Miss Trunchbull, for this woman had prejudice against her intelligence at her first weekly test. In addition, not only Miss Honey and Matilda, but the whole school, loathed Miss Trunchbull.This ex-Olympic hammer thrower was fond of flinging students out of the windows at will.Moreover, Miss Trunchbull refused to acknowledge Matilda's genius and promote her. This increased the existing tension between them.Fortunately, Matilda found by accident that she could channel her brainpower to manipulate objects. She then decided to use her supernatural power to get rid of Miss Trunchbull for good, and to rectify the wrongs she had done to Miss Honey.In the end, Matilda succeeded both in her school and her family, she won back Miss Honey her house and was adopted by her and lived a wonderful life. ‘Justice always triumphs over evil,’ as the saying goes.

I really enjoyed reading this fantastic masterpiece.It is not only humorous and makes you laugh; it carries a special message.It shows that no matter how intelligent a person is, he needs to be loved and cared.Matilda is a good example.Although she was clever enough to read the whole set of newspaper and magazines when she was three, she continuously attempted to seek true love from the people around her, which she was always lacking of.This book also reflects the serious problem of child abuse.Mr. Dahl uses a clever way to express his opinion on this issue.Actually, he manages to express all his concerns through the main character, Matilda.He shows his anger through the tricks Matilda had played on the adults, so as to raise his concerns to the world.

My favourite part of the whole story is when little Brucie was called up to the platform in the assembly, and was punished for stealing a slice of cake from the kitchen.He was forced to eat a gigantic cake of fully eighteen inches in diameter and covered with dark-brown chocolate icing.At first, everyone in the hall betted that he could never finish it, but Brucie faced the challenge optimistically. He cut himself slices of cakes and put them into his mouth as quickly as he could.He was doing it quite fast until he reached the third quarter, he was sitting on his chair like some huge overstuffed grub, unable to move or to speak, but he had shown no signs of flagging and giving up, he felt that over two hundred and fifty students were silently rooting for him.He continued putting the stuff into his mouth slowly.When the last mouthful disappeared, a tremendous cheer rose from the audience and the student all leaped onto their chairs, yelling, clapping and shouting.At this moment, Miss Trunchbull stood motionless about Brucie’s victory.She grabbed the large empty China platter and threw it down with a crash on Brucie’s head.I loved this part not just because it was funny. I admired the vocabulary used by Mr. Dahl.He skillfully gives a clear outline as to what he was writing about.This is usually done through dialogue, making every scene he had set vividly.

Even though humor is perhaps the backbone of “Matilda”, having a young girl to be the main protagonist of the story is something children will come to admire. In most books today, it is common for the author to portray an adult as the main character of the story. In this way, it can attract more people to read the book.

On the other hand, Quentin Blake’s good sketches, funny and quirky illustrations really contribute greatly to the book.The bright yellow cover with a small cartoon drawn of a girl perched gently upon a huge stack of books more than twice as big as herself, give readers an insight into the story and the strong desire of Matilda to show her capacity of accomplishing great things, and to exhibit an independent spirit.Each picture is so vibrant and full of flesh and vitality, it almost seems like the characters are leaping out from the page.

All in all, the book is really worth reading. From reading this book, we learn from Matilda how to get ourselves out of bad or difficult situations.It also teaches us never to give up.I highly recommend this book to all students, young and old.