The Gremlins has a very good claim to being Roald Dahl's first piece of writing for children. It is certainly one of the first stories he ever wrote. He began work on it in 1942, soon after his first paid piece of writing, Shot Down Over Libya, was published in the Saturday Evening Post. He was working for the British Embassy in Washington DC at the time and sent his finished Gremlins story to his bosses for approval. From there, it was forwarded by British movie producer and entrepreneur Sidney Bernstein on to Walt Disney, who liked the story so much he wanted to turn it into a movie. The gremlins are little creatures responsible for the various mechanical failures on aeroplanes, as the pilot in the story, Gus, discovers. Taking its inspiration from RAF folklore and the many gremlin tales he had heard during his own time as a pilot, Roald's story went on to tell how Gus tames the gremlins and persuades them to help him return to flying.

The Gremlins by Dahl, Roald and a great selection of similar Used, New and Collectible Books available now at AbeBooks.com. The sweet scents of rural life infuse this collection of Roald Dahl's country stories, but there is always something unexpected lurking in the undergrowth.

Although the Disney film version of The Gremlins was later shelved, a shortened version of the story appeared in the American general interest magazine Cosmopolitan in 1942 with Roald using the pen name 'Pegasus.' And a year later, The Gremlins was released as a book by Walt Disney and Random House with proceeds going to the RAF Benevolent Fund. Roald bought 50 copies to send out, delivering one to the first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, who responded with enthusiasm and was said to have read the story to her grandchildren. Although James and the Giant Peach - released in 1961, nearly 20 years later - was Roald Dahl's first novel consciously written for children, The Gremlins was marketed as a children's story at the time and remains an early example of the appeal of his writing to a young audience. It was re-issued in 2006 by Dark Horse Books.

The Gremlins also helped the little creatures already well-known in RAF folklore to cross over into wider popular culture. The 1984 film Gremlins, produced by Stephen Spielberg and directed by Joe Dante, is said to be loosely inspired by the characters in Roald Dahl's story.

A young boy and his Norwegian grandmother, who is an expert on witches, together foil a witches plot to destroy the worlds children by turning them into mice. A young boy and his Norwegian grandmother, who is an expert on witches, together foil a witches plot to destroy the worlds children by turning them into mice.uccessful author whom The Evening Standard would one day dub one of the greatest childrens writers of all time. Dahl may have been an unenthusiastic student, but he loved adventure stories, and when he finished school he went out into the world to have some adventures of his own. He went abroad as a representative of the Shell corporation in Dar-es-Salaam, and then served in World War II as a pilot in the Royal Air Force. After the war, Dahl began his writing career in earnest, publishing two well-received collections of short stories for adults, along with one flop of a novel. The short stories, full of tension and subtle psychological horror, didnt seem to presage a childrens author. Malcolm Bradbury wrote in The New York Times Book Review, Dahls characters are usually ignoble: he knows the dog beneath the skin, or works hard to find it.

Yet this talent for finding, and exposing, the nastier sides of grown-up behavior served him well in writing for children. Delete A File From The Ifs Of God. As Dahl put it, Writing is all propaganda, in a sense. You can get at greediness and selfishness by making them look ridiculous. The greatest attribute of a human being is kindness, and all the other qualities like bravery and perseverance are secondary to that. In 1953, Dahl married the actress Patricia Neal; two of his early childrens books, James and the Giant Peach (1961) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) grew out of the bedtime stories he made up for their children. Elaine Moss, writing in the Times, called the latter the funniest childrens book I have read in years; not just funny but shot through with a zany pathos which touches the young heart. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a colossal hit.