From
Susan Vahabzadeh
Roald Dahl is best known for his children’s books. But one can also find his short stories for adults disturbing – some of them are so terrifying in the best sense of the word that it begs the question who actually thinks them up. In the case of Roald Dahl, it’s like this: he had a thriving imagination, but terrible things happen in his children’s books too. For example, in “Witches,” a little boy finds out that witches are all around him, and then he’s turned into a mouse. Many children are terrified of such a plot and still want to hear, see, or read it – for the same reason that adults are sometimes frightened for entertainment purposes: fear is part of life, and many fictions we entertain with help us to deal with our fears. Actually, everyone is reasonably clear that children shouldn’t be bombarded with horror films until they get insomnia. But if you prepared them for a life in which disturbances will no longer occur, would they then be prepared for life?