Unit 2: Vocabulary from Readings 4

Grimm’s fairy tales are notoriously violent and grisly, especially considering the sheer number of abandoned and mistreated children that populate the lore of fairy tales.

Grimm’s fairy tales are notoriously violent and grisly, especially considering the sheer number of abandoned and mistreated children that populate the lore of fairy tales.

Grimm’s fairy tales are notoriously violent and grisly, especially considering the sheer number of abandoned and mistreated children that populate the lore of fairy tales.

Roald Dahl, who wrote the classic children’s book, James and the Giant Peach, is as famous for his cruelly ironic adult short stories as he is for his popular and dark stories like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, written for and about children.

Whether bringing to life his own literary creations such as Frankenweenie (2012) or The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), or adapting popular works such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) or Alice in Wonderland (2010), Burton offers a dark and delightful revisioning of childhood stories.

His first project as an apprentice was a six-minute film called, Vincent (1982), a tribute to actor Vincent Price and author Edgar Allan Poe, two significant childhood influences.

The film features a seven-year-old boy, Vincent Malloy, who fantasizes about acting out Poe's gothic horror stories and dreams of being an anguished character like Price.

All of the children in the story, save Charlie, are undeserving wretches.

In the summertime, this wasn’t too bad, but in the winter, freezing cold drafts blew across the floor all night long, and it was awful.

Great flabby folds of fat bulged out from every part of his body, and his face was like a monstrous ball of dough with two small greedy curranty eyes peering out upon the world.

But still, that’s better than being a hooligan and shooting off zip guns and things like that in his spare time, isn’t it?

And what I always say is, he wouldn’t go on eating like he does unless he needed nourishment, would he?

“What a revolting woman,” said Grandma Josephine.

"And what a repulsive boy,” said Grandma Georgina.

I’m in the peanut business, you see, and I’ve got about a hundred women working for me over at my joint, shelling peanuts for roasting and salting.

I’m in the peanut business, you see, and I’ve got about a hundred women working for me over at my joint, shelling peanuts for roasting and salting.

Well, sir, I just hated to see my little girl feeling unhappy like that, so I vowed I would keep up the search until I’d got her what she wanted.