Both of those quoted passages are gone. Simply gone. The following four sentences remain unchanged: "George didn't say a word. He felt quite trembly. He knew something tremendous had taken place that morning. For a few brief moments he had touched with the very tips of his fingers the edge of a magic world." - but this wordless reaction is NOT to his parents' shrugging and accepting response to the elimination of Grandma from the world, but rather to the much earlier puzzled reaction by his mother ("Mrs. Kransky kept wandering around with a puzzled look on her face, saying, 'Mother, where are you? Where've you gone? Where've you got to? How can I find you?'") He took a full tube of TOOTHPASTE and squeezed out the whole lot of it in one long worm. ‘Maybe that will brighten up those horrid brown teeth of hers,’ he said. There was an aerosol can of SUPERFOAM SHAVING SOAP belonging to his father. George loved playing with aerosols. He pressed the button and kept his finger on it until there was nothing left. A wonderful mountain of white foam built up in the giant saucepan. With his fingers, he scooped out the contents of ajar of VITAMIN ENRICHED FACE CREAM. In went a small bottle of scarlet NAIL VARNISH. ‘If the toothpaste doesn’t clean her teeth,’ George said, ‘then this will paint them as red as roses.’

Design a label for the bottle of George’s Marvellous medicine. What information would it need to include?

Look at the capacity of different containers… Which size container might George need to make a new medicine? What capacity would the container need to be to make medicine for all of his dad’s farm animals?

In George's Marvellous Medicine we meet young George who is burdened with the job of giving his Grandmother her daily medicine. Again Dahl has gone against the norm and written the Grandmother as a mean, snarling, despicable character rather than the sweet old lady we are accustomed to with book Grandmothers. Mmmm. I really like Roald Dahl but this book...is a little scary. I wouldn't let my child read it. Introducing the idea into a child's head to create a concoction to add to a liquid medicine someone is currently taking is not something I want to do.

Looking for something different

And suddenly, George found himself dancing around the steaming pot, chanting strange words that came into his head out of nowhere! Clearly, alliteration is important in this book. It's all over the place - and just look at the title! Other instances of the literary device have also been destroyed: "horny hand" (in fact, it's "huge horny hand" on p.80) is apparently now "wrinkly hand" - which is not at all the same thing. And "the skinny old hag's head" (p.84) is just "her skinny old head." "Frisky as a ferret" has twice been changed (pp.60 & 63), first to "lively as a ferret," and the second instead makes reference to "a new lease of life." Ugh. Elsewhere a reference to George's father's "huge head" (p.49) has been removed. All fictional heads must be the same size, or if they are not, we can't possibly mention anything about the distinction. I mean, just imagine what might ensue if we didn't do this.

a b Dellatto, Marisa (20 February 2023). "Roald Dahl Books Get New Edits—And Critics Cry Censorship: The Controversy Surrounding 'Charlie And The Chocolate Factory' And More". Forbes. Jersey City, New Jersey, USA. ISSN 0015-6914. Archived from the original on 28 February 2023 . Retrieved 27 February 2023. It made George choke and splutter. It was a smell unlike any he had smelt before. It was a brutal, bewitching smell, spicy and staggering, fierce and frenzied, full of wizardry and magic. Think about medicines that the children are familiar with. What do they do to our bodies? How can we use them safely?

Teaching Ideas and Resources:

When I was twelve years old I gave a mini presentation to my English class about this book. Afterwards it was time for questions, one annoying girl (who looked strangely like Princess Leia from Star Wars) persisted in asking me, several times, if I didn’t realise that this was a “kid’s book.” She couldn’t understand how I could be reading it at my age; she even went as far as to call me childish. I was terribly insulted. I didn’t know how to respond. She went after me and gave her presentation on The Golden Compass which she said, whilst looking at me, with her nose up in the air, was a book for adults. Her mum had read it after all.