The "Foulsome and Disgusterous" Dahl

The BFG spitting out the 'Snozzcumber'

Roald Dahl is famous for his disgusting and playful imagination, his use of childish humour, and a great many invented words. These aspects usually come together nicely when describing horrible and gory foods, which he often does. I will be looking at handful of the many horrible foods Dahl often explores in his books, see how children react to it, and even try to make my own adapted gory versions!!

Roald Dahl’s The BFG or ‘Big Friendly Giant’ is the “only big friendly giant in Giant country.” He makes friends with a little orphan girl named Sophie. We discover that because he doesn’t eat ‘human beans’ he is not left with much choice and so resorts to eating the dreaded ‘snozzcumber.’ He says woefully how “nothing is growing except for one extremely icky-poo vegetable. It’s called the snozzcumber.”  I decided to come with up with an experimental activity and so after gathering a small army of little siblings and little cousins, I sat them down and read to them the passage describing the snozzcumber. I then asked them to come up with an invented food, but that it had to be the worst food they could think of using their five senses to describe the food and to draw a picture along side it.

Below are two examples of what the children came up with:

By Mo (9) 'THE SLINGPOPPER.' Colour: lead grey, blue and green. Has spikes and is 'squishy like a rotten banana'

                                  ... Hmm looks suspiciously like a cucumber or gherkin to me!

By Ibby (5) "The JUMBY"



<------- "Looks like a purple pear with slime and spikes. Tastes like cheesy feet mixed with broccoli and mashed peas. "
 So it tastes like broccoli and peas and looks like a pear/aubergine hybrid... I sense a pattern here....


Though the kids found this activity hilarious and shrieked at each others work with delight, it was hugely fascinating and insightful to see that all of the five children had some sort of gory adaptation of a specific fruit or vegetable, and not any other food. This made me question how fruits and vegetables are depicted within children's literature, and the answer was 'not very positively.' They were inspired by the description of the 'snozzcumber' which itself resembles a 'cucumber' both in name and appearance. Almost all children have an aversion to at least some vegetables and it was more than clear in the depictions of their invented "worst food ever."