The BFG Read online

  Other books by Roald Dahl

  BOY: TALES OF CHILDHOOD

  BOY and GOING SOLO

  CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

  CHARLIE AND THE GREAT GLASS ELEVATOR

  THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF CHARLIE AND MR WILLY WONKA DANNY THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD

  GEORGE'S MARVELLOUS MEDICINE

  GOING SOLO

  JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH

  MATILDA

  THE WITCHES

  For younger readers

  THE ENORMOUS CROCODILE

  ESIO TROT

  FANTASTIC MR FOX

  THE GIRAFFE AND THE PELLY AND ME

  THE MAGIC FINGER

  THE TWITS

  Picture books

  DIRTY BEASTS (with Quentin Blake) THE ENORMOUS CROCODILE (with Quentin Blake) THE GIRAFFE AND THE PELLY AND ME (with Quentin Blake) THE MINPINS (with Patrick Benson) REVOLTING RHYMES (with Quentin Blake) Plays

  THE BFG: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood) CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY: A PLAY (Adapted by Richard George) FANTASTIC MR FOX: A PLAY (Adapted by Sally Reid) JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH: A PLAY (Adapted by Richard George) THE TWITS: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood) THE WITCHES: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood) Teenage fiction

  THE GREAT AUTOMATIC GRAMMATIZATOR AND OTHER STORIES

  RHYME STEW

  SKIN AND OTHER STORIES

  THE VICAR OF NIBBLESWICKE

  THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUCAR AND SIX MORE

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rose bank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England puffinbooks.com

  First published by Jonathan Cape Ltd 1982

  First published in the USA by Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1982

  Published in Puffin Books 1984

  This edition published 2007

  2

  Text copyright (c) Roald Dahl Nominee Ltd, 1982

  Illustrations copyright (c) Quentin Blake, 1982

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being which imposed on the subsequent purchaser British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British library ISBN: 978-0-14-193013-8

  For Olivia

  20 April 1955-17 November 1962

  Contents

  List of Characters

  The Witching Hour

  Who?

  The Snatch

  The Cave

  The BFG

  The Giants

  The Marvellous Ears

  Snozzcumbers

  The Bloodbottler

  Frobscottle and Whizzpoppers

  Journey to Dream Country

  Dream-Catching

  A Trogglehumper for the Fleshlumpeater

  Dreams

  The Great Plan

  Mixing the Dream

  Journey to London

  The Palace

  The Queen

  The Royal Breakfast

  The Plan

  Capture!

  Feeding Time

  The Author

  The characters in this book are:

  HUMANS:

  THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND

  MARY, the Queen's maid

  MR TIBBS, the Palace butler

  THE HEAD OF THE ARMY

  THE HEAD OF THE AIR FORCE

  And, of course, SOPHIE, an orphan

  GIANTS:

  THE FLESHLUMPEATER

  THE BONECRUNCHER

  THE MANHUGGER

  THE CHILDCHEWER

  THE MEATDRIPPER

  THE GIZZARDGULPER

  THE MAIDMASHER

  THE BLOODBOTTLER

  THE BUTCHER BOY

  And, of course, THE BFG

  The Witching Hour

  Sophie couldn't sleep.

  A brilliant moonbeam was slanting through a gap in the curtains. It was shining right on to her pillow.

  The other children in the dormitory had been asleep for hours.

  Sophie closed her eyes and lay quite still. She tried very hard to doze off.

  It was no good. The moonbeam was like a silver blade slicing through the room on to her face.

  The house was absolutely silent. No voices came up from downstairs. There were no footsteps on the floor above either.

  The window behind the curtain was wide open, but nobody was walking on the pavement outside. No cars went by on the street. Not the tiniest sound could be heard anywhere. Sophie had never known such a silence.

  Perhaps, she told herself, this was what they called the witching hour.

  The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world to themselves.

  The moonbeam was brighter than ever on Sophie's pillow. She decided to get out of bed and close the gap in the curtains.

  You got punished if you were caught out of bed after lights-out. Even if you said you had to go to the lavatory, that was not accepted as an excuse and they punished you just the same. But there was no one about now, Sophie was sure of that.

  She reached out for her glasses that lay on the chair beside her bed. They had steel rims and very thick lenses, and she could hardly see a thing without them. She put them on, then she slipped out of bed and tiptoed over to the window.

  When she reached the curtains, Sophie hesitated. She longed to duck underneath them and lean out of the window to see what the world looked like now that the witching hour was at hand.

  She listened again. Everywhere it was deathly still.

  The longing to look out became so strong she couldn't resist it. Quickly, she ducked under the curtains and leaned out of the window.

  In the silvery moonlight, the village street she knew so well seemed completely different. The houses looked bent and crooked, like houses in a fairy tale. Everything was pale and ghostly and milky-white.

  Across the road, she could see Mrs Rance's shop, where you bought buttons and wool and bits of elastic. It didn't look real. There was something dim and misty about that too.

  Sophie allowed her eye to travel further and further down the street.

  Suddenly she froze. There was something coming up the street on the opposite side.

  It was something black...

  Something tall and black...

  Something very tall and very black and very thin.

  Who?

  It wasn't a human. It couldn't be. It was four times as tall as the tallest human. It was so tall its head was higher than the upstairs windows of the houses. Sophie opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Her throat, li