Charlie And The Chocolate Factory And A Young Girl

The teacher in about the fourth or fifth grade of a school my children went to gave the kids in that class an assignment to write an essay on someone famous they liked. Most of the children wrote letters to movie stars, to sports players, to maybe politicians. Most received back a brief note or some received nothing.

My daughter chose her letter to be written to Roald Dahl, the author of the then popular book called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. She and all the kids loved the story, so did I and many of the parents.

I went to the library to get his address in England, no Internet then where I could have gotten it by some research. He responded and she told him she would send him a painting and he was happy. So she painted him a lovely painting and I had it framed in the framing store where I had all her paintings framed and I took it to the post office and sent it to England.

He in turn sent her the copy of his latest book and it was called James and the Giant Peach and he autographed it. She was so excited and somehow the Sunpapers heard of this and they sent out a reporter to interview her. The writer was nice and she wrote a pleasant article about this young girl who had chosen a famous writer for her project. They did get the title wrong saying she had sold it to him, that was incorrect, it was given to him. That was OK.

I see where Gene Wilder passed on and they mentioned in his obituary that he played the chocolate man who owned or managed the candy factory. His real name was Jerome Silberman and he went on to play other roles, but was mentioned a lot in these articles.

Every time I go into a candy store, not often, when you are on Weight Watchers, I think of Charlie and the factory and of Roald Dahl. His wife was a famous movie star and she sent my daughter a card once. Her name was Patricia Neal.

When she got sick and had a stroke, Roald helped her back to good health and aided her in her speech which was slowly coming back to her.

So Charlie and Roald gave our family some sweet as the candy was nice memories and especially to a little kid in elementary school. She, herself is now a published playwright. Some famous folks are kind to people or kids who admired them and this is really sweet as all that chocolate written about in the book.