George has to show his grandma that it was him who made her grow so he gives the medicine to their hen

                   George Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl

This novel plays on the fact that children are told that the food that is not necessary palatable is still good for them, because they will grow up to be tall and strong. This idea of food helping someone grow is therefore used to make someone really old grow again. George, a young boy at eight is left alone with his grandma. She tends to be really mean when they are alone so George decides to punish his grandma by making a medicine that will make her explode. The food in the book is therefore represented through the medicine, because it is consumed, multiple times. The food that is used is actually not food, it is everything else adults use to improve their life without actually consuming it.

The moment George had given his Grandma the medicine, “Grandma yelled “Oweeee!” and her whole body shot up woosh into the air.” The transition begins with her up in the “mid air… about two feet up … still in the sitting position … but rigid now… frozen… quivering …the eyes bulging… the hair straight up on end.”(p.50)

The interesting thing about this novel is that the chapters are titled in the same way a modern recipe would be, by instructing the reader how to do the cooking. The culinary experience is included in this book through its midst chapters. The first chapter introduced the characters and the storyline while the second chapter titled The Marvellous Plan introduces the interest to cook and some of the preparations. In the third chapter George Begins to Make the Medicine, George introduces the first ingredients which are “EVERYTHING he could find” (p.25). This includes shampoo, toothpaste, super foam, shaving soap, vitamin enriched face cream, nail varnish, perfume, floor and shoe polish, horseradish sauce and etc. At least horseradish sauce exists and is fully makeable just follow the link below for the BBC recipe.

Horseradishsauce recipe can be found here

Chapter five gives the reader the instructions for the cooking of the medicine, which is basically to put “EVERYTHING” in a saucepan, turn the heat on as high as it will go and then stir it with a wooden spoon. Do this until the mixture is frothing and foaming and has a fearsome smell. It should smell “brutal and bewitching… spicy and staggering, fierce and frenzied, full of wizardry and magic” and perhaps at the whole experience should be finished with dancing around in the kitchen singing

“Friery broth and witch’s brew

Foamy froth and riches blue

Fume and spume and spoondrift spray

Fizzle swizzle shout hooray

Watch it sloshing, swashing, sploshing

Hear it hissing, squishing, spissing

Grandma better start to pray” (p. 44)

 

Or perhaps just switch out “Grandma”with the name of the one it is intended for. It is also very interesting that the medicine is initially blue which makes it seem magical, but then it needs to be turned into the dreary colour brown to make it fit the reality of the text. Another interesting bit that you don’t usually see in cookbooks is other people’s interpretation of the recipe or the narrator's several attempts to make the recipe more than once. His father is in astonishment and excitement about the result of the transformation of Grandma and the chicken, therefore he has George trying to recreate the medicine. He does not remember how he made the marvellous recipe in the first place so he has to try several times in order to please his audience which seems to be his father and us of course.

Fun theme for children's party

Making the medicine in real life

 

                                                             - The End -

Welcome To My Blog

I have desired to look at children's literature and food for some time now and luckily I finally can. I have always enjoyed children’s literature, ever since I was a child I have been read to or tried to read myself. I liked it when main characters were children because they were the same age as me and they seemed to have this freedom to do whatever they wanted to. They took charge and changed their world despite sudden changes. They grew, shrank, turned invisible or transformed entirely into animals, other people or transferred to different dimensions and still they usually saved the day.  

It was often food that initiated a process of transformation in the novels. I think food was something that was focused a lot on when we were children as well. Perhaps we all remember our parents telling us that “if you just eat that green healthy thing on the plate you will grow tall and strong” (at least that’s how it sounded in my head). So perhaps our parents too remembered the stories they read as children and used our imagination against us. Well, anyway over the next couple of weeks I was thinking that this blog should focus on how food is represented in the books below.

v   Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), by Lewis Carol.

v   Asbjørnsen and Moe’s collection of Norwegian tales for children, East of the sun and west of the moon: old tales from the north (1812-1885).

v   George’s Marvellous Medicine (1981) by Roald Dahl.

v  Two of the Harry Potter book series by J.K. Rowling.

v  Hansel and Gretel (1812) by the Brothers Grimm.

 

 

The questions that I will hopefully answer are:

v  Why is the food chosen as the element to change a character?

v  What type of food is represented to change the characters? Is it palatable?

v  Is there a culinary art to it or is it just consumed?

v  Why is the food colourful? Why does it have to be tempting? Why can’t it just be the bread the character had for breakfast?  Or is it the opposite of tempting?

v  How does this representation of food relate to reality?

v  How is the change in a character received by the other characters? Could this these reactions be mirroring how we react to people around us changing reality?

v  What sort of change does the character experience? Is it magical? Visual? Mentally? Dimensional?