Revolting Rhymes and Dirty Beasts by Roald Dahl

Title: Revolting Rhymes and Dirty Beasts
Author: Roald Dahl
Read by:  Stephen Mangan, Tamsin Greig, and Miriam Margolyes
Publisher: Penguin Audio

Length: Approximately 1 Hour (1 CD)
Source:  Review Copy from Penguin Thanks!

We listed to Revolting Rhymes and Dirty Beasts by Roald Dahl a year or so ago on a family trip.  I cracked it out again last week and all of the kids loved it again – it was like new.  It’s nice to find something that interests not only my ten year old son Kile, but his eight-year old brother Daniel, and 5-year old sister Penelope.

Revolting Rhymes are basically six fractured fairy tales.  Penelope loved that they were fairy tales, Kile and Daniel loved that they all had a twist, usually a dark comedic twist.  I don’t think Red Riding Hood will ever be the same for them now that they think she is wicked good with a gun and has a love for wolf skin coats.  Kile isn’t one to show emotions, but he laughed out loud several times during this audiobook and him, his friend Zach and brother Daniel brought it up in conversation days later. 

Dirty Beasts are a collection of poems about different animals. These are also darkly humorous and the kids loved guessing what would happen at the end of each poem.  Penelope was just talking about these today when she saw some ants outside and it reminded her of the anteater in one of the tales.

I loved the production of these tales.  The jaunty music before and after each tale or poem was great – I wanted to listen to that on its own! The actors telling the tales were fantastic and put real emotion and sound effects into each tale.

Overall, this was a fabulous audiobook for children and shows Roald Dahl’s dark humor.  There are dark twists in the book though so it may not be appropriate for the very young or those that don’t want to know that Cinderella and the Prince did not end up happily ever after.