By far the worst work I've seen of Dahl's. I usually love his stories.

I didn't see the cover but I thought this was going to be a book about the gremlins that you don't feed at night. Still pleasantly surprised to see that it's the gremlins on planes. I saw a cartoon of this when I was a child. Animaniacs, probably?

Cute illustrations. The fifinellas, widgets, and spandules were interesting additions to the story.

I'm sorry this never saw the light of day as a film!

I had never heard of this book before so I was quite intrigued by what the story was about. I was also quite surprised to see that the artwork was done by artists at the Disney studios which I think added another element to the story.

I can see why Dahl’s first published book was based around the RAF and their pilots during the Battle for Britain. Being a pilot in the RAF himself, Dahl would be intimately involved and aware of the stories that the pilots would tell themselves to explain away the unexplainable.

I liked this book, and I appreciated being able to see Dahl’s first book for the very first time.

Noteworthy mainly for its place in Disney history. The story itself definitely feels like the unfinished work that it is, but it is an interesting look at what might have been.

The Storyline
“In this most beautiful green wood there lived a tribe of funny little people who were quite different from the rest. They had funny horns growing out of their funny heads and funny boots on their funny feet, and with these boots – and this was funniest of all – they could walk upside down under the branches of the trees. Oh, it was a happy and peaceful life that these little men led – until the humans came.”

And so begins the story of the Gremlins who were torn from their homes when the humans decided to build a factory for airplane production. The Gremlins knew it was time to act and ‘to get revenge for the loss of our homes. We will make mischief for them, and we will harry and tease the men who fly them, until we obtain some satisfaction for all the harm that has been done to us.’



The pilots finally figured out a way to appease these pesky Gremlins: feeding them Transatlantic-special-deliver-airmail stamps. By feeding them this delicacy, they were finally able to talk to the Gremlins and explain why they tore down their home and that it was to save their homes from all being destroyed. The pilot asked the Gremlins to help and that if they assisted and were victorious that they would give them a patch of forest back to them to be their new home.

Interesting Facts
This was actually the very first children’s book that Roald Dahl ever wrote. ‘The Gremlins’ is a story set in the 1940’s when we were in the midst of WWII. This story was originally meant to be a film by Walt Disney but was dropped and never completed but the book was still published. This is considered to be a quite rare book as fewer than 5,000 books were published worldwide.

Thoughts
This was an adorable book that I stumbled upon. Highly recommended to anyone given the opportunity to read it!

We have a copy of this book that was given to Dad when it was published. He was a boy in Yorkshire during the war, and someone had the good sense to give him this book. It's now 70ish years old, has been dropped in at least one bath we know of, made it's way from England to Australia, and is simply a little worse for wear.

But I am so glad it made this journey as it allowed me to read a book that no one else my family that I know of has read. As a kid, that was so incredibly cool!!

And it was a book my Dad loved so much that when I was little, I was showered in Roald Dahl's other books. And I couldn't have asked for much else.

I was actually expecting something a bit more. I picked up this book because it was referenced by Lost in Shangri-la. Gremlins, for those of you not in the know, are these little creatures that run amok on airplanes causing all sorts of problems. The book was cute, but not much more than that.