The Magic Finger
LC Class PZ7.D1515 Mag[1] | | |
The Magic Finger is a 1966 children's story by British author Roald Dahl.[3][4] First published in the United States by Harper & Row with illustrations by William Pène du Bois,[1][5] Allen & Unwin published the first U.K. edition in 1968.[2] Later editions have been illustrated by Pat Marriott, Tony Ross, and Quentin Blake.[5] The novel was adapted into a 1990 TV special on ITV (CITV).[6] The author Roald Dahl narrated an unabridged recording for Harper Children Audio[7] and Kate Winslet narrated an unabridged recording in 2013 for Penguin Audio.[8]
Synopsis
The Magic Finger is narrated by an unnamed 8-year-old girl who is growing up on a remote rural
One day, the girl sees Mr. Gregg and his two sons, Philip and William, returning home from a hunt with a deer that they have just killed, and they make fun of her when she shouts at them. In a rage, the girl puts the Magic Finger itself on the entire family; when they wake up the following morning they have shrunk to bird-size and developed "ducks' wings" in place of their arms and hands. While trying out their new wings, the Greggs fly out of their beloved house, which is promptly occupied by four human-sized ducks with human arms and human hands, and they are all soon forced to build a nest in an old tree for the night.
The following morning, the Greggs all find that, in a major reversal of their habits, three out of four of the ducks are holding the Greggs' hunting guns in their hands. Desperately, Mr and Mrs Gregg both persuade the ducks not to shoot them, but the mother duck (the only duck who never holds a gun) taunts them about their own fondness for shooting, especially since the previous day, they somehow shot all 6 of the duck's precious children. Mr Gregg tells the duck mother to give up shooting and he destroys all 3 guns with a big hammer, swearing never to hurt another duck, deer "or anything else again". The four ducks then head back toward the lake where they live, before letting the Greggs leave their tree. Then, the Greggs all find themselves returned to normal by magic.
The 8-year-old girl comes by the Greggs'
References
- ^ a b c "The magic finger". LC Online Catalog. Library of Congress (lccn.loc.gov). Retrieved 2016-02-13.
- ^ a b
"The magic finger". WorldCat.org. Retrieved 2016-02-13.
One library catalogue record for the 1974 Puffin Books edition. "Originally published: / with illustrations by William Pène du Bois. New York : Harper and Row, 1966 ; London : Allen and Unwin, 1968." - ^ "The Magic Finger". Roald Dahl (roalddahl.com). Retrieved 2015-10-01.
- ^
"The Magic Finger". Stories: 1960s. Roald Dahl. Retrieved 2016-02-11.
"The Girl". Characters: Children. Roald Dahl. Retrieved 2016-02-11. - ^ a b The Magic Finger title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Retrieved 2016-02-13.
- ^ "The Magic Finger (TV Movie 1990) - IMDb". IMDb.
- ^ "Roald Dahl – The Roald Dahl Audio Collection". Discogs.com. Retrieved 12 December 2023.
- ^ "THE TWITS, THE MINPINS, & THE MAGIC FINGER by Roald Dahl". AudioFile.com. Retrieved 12 December 2023.
External links
- The Magic Finger title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
