Matilda is brilliant. Sensitive and brilliant, but Mr and Mrs Wormwood treat her as a scab, not a daughter - a scab to be endured until the time comes to flick her away to the next county, or preferably farther.
Even before she is five years old, Matilda has read Dickens and Hemingway, Kipling and Steinbeck, and still her parents think her just a nuisance. So she decides to get her own back. Matilda's car salesman father, in his loud checked suit, and her platinum-haired mother are no match for her sharp genius. And when she is attacked by Miss Trunchbull, the headmistress who could teach Wackford Squeers a thing or two about punishment, the child prodigy discovers she has an extraordinary psychic power that can save her school and especially her lovely teacher, Miss Honey.
This is a novel with all the qualities of The BFG and The Witches (winner of the 1983 Whitbread Award). Roald Dahl has done it again!