Rereading the seven stories collected here, observes Dahl in his preface, fills the British author with "acute nostalgia and with vivid memories of those sweet days" after WW II, when he wrote for four hours a day and then set off for the rolling, rural landscape of England's Buckinghamshire, looking for mischief. Yet little to date in Dahl's ( My Uncle Oswald ) fictional universe has been merely wistful or gentle, and these delicious tales, based loosely on Dahl's youthful exploits in the countryside, are in fact full of his characteristic literary capers; the works build, by book's end, a rustic community populated by con artists, poachers and thieves, where each man buffets his neighbor for supremacy and even the most stealthy among them strives to outdo adversaries with pranks. "My dear friends, you've no idea the trouble these rascals will go to," declaims a bogus clergyman in "Parson's Pleasure," where scams give life its meaning. This man of the cloth is actually an antiques dealer who uses his costume to persuade suspicious countrymen to accept small sums for their inherited valuables, which bring him large profits. Here and elsewhere, Dahl shrewdly uses ostensibly simple fables as vehicles for richly mordant examinations of human foibles. Illustrations not seen by PW. Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. From School Library Journal YA-- Written in the late 1940s, these seven short stories were originally published in American magazines and are collected here for the first time. The secret of determining the sex of a calf, the parson who collects antiques by duplicity, the illegal greyhound races using a ringer, the ingenious poaching methods for pheasant using raisins and sleeping pills, and a proposed maggot factory are among the everyday occurrences in a British village, related with deft craftsmanship in Dahl's unmatched style.

A touch of irony, unexpected endings, and a hint of the wicked and shocking are couched in Dahl's brand of humor; young adults will accept the gruesome details as natural and entertaining. Black-and-white line drawings complement the text with character illustrations. A book that's useful for readers interested in writing, humor, and memorable characters and a possibility for booktalk introductions.

ENGLISH  LITERATURE