Reviews for The twits

The average rating for The twits based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-06-21 00:00:00 Lanna Stanley I feel full of the joys of spring! This was such a delightful little book. My morbid, inner kid couldn't have been more ecstatic! Should I call someone a twit or a nitwit? I guess, no. That would be very rude of me! My doppelgänger would approve otherwise. And since I'm not like my sinister doppelgänger, I would leave all the sheer nastiness to him along with Mr. and Mrs. Twit, who are also quite repulsive, if you ask me. I'd rather have pleasant thoughts rather than wicked ones. "If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely." Now, where do I begin? Ah yes! Let's start with Mr. and Mrs. Twit. Well, I assure you, that both of them are a little bit, say, a few sandwiches short of a picnic or if you prefer something blunter, they're not one of the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree. Mr. Twit is a very bushy, nailbrushy-faced, grizzly old man who doesn't bother with his appearance. I can't for the life of me understand why he'd rather bury himself in that grubby face of his. And please ladies and gentlemen, I implore you not to peer into that dreadful crevasse of moustachy bristles filled with mouldy and magotty morsels! Mrs. Twit is just like Mr. Twit, but she's no better than him. She's as foul as his malodorous husband with a walking stick and a glass eye! They are one of the most hideous characters who'd exact revenge upon each other, given a chance. "I'll swish you to a swazzle! I'll swash you to a swizzle! I'll gnash you to a gnozzle! I'll gnosh you to a gnazzle!" And if that wasn't enough for vengeance, there's this Giant Skillywiggler with teeth like screwdrivers, eat-me-up-while-its-hot Squiggly Spaghetti, the dreadful shrink, some Hugtight extraordinary glue for extra staying power ' perfect for your Wednesday's Bird Pie supper! Or even Boy Pie supper for that matter, if you want to satiate your cannibalistic tendencies. "He's going to boil us!" "He'll stew us alive!" "He'll cook us with carrots!" Oh, what a fun way to bake some spoiled children! Errr... I beg your pardon, but that was my doppelgänger talking. I have to restrain him once more. Now, on to the Twit's garden, we go! This two nasty couple keep Muggle-Wump and his family locked in a protective cage. This poor family are coerced to perform upside-down tricks for the Twit's amusement, including eating, dancing, playing, drinking, and all the jazz! What the Twits don't realize is that Muggle-Wump along with the Roly-Poly Bird is crafting a brilliant plan to get rid of them once and for all... The Twits was truly an imaginative yet horrid tale filled with peculiar characters, unbridled wickedness, misanthropic undertones, playful wit, and clever word play ' all done with cheeky humour! It seems that Dahl himself has a certain kind of aversion when it comes to unkempt appearance. Is Dahl implying that Mr. Twit needs some kind of manscaping or he isn't just fond of all that hairy mess? If you analyse further, he seems to be also discriminatory. Just look at Mrs. Twit's glass eye, which in reality you might call lazy eye or amblyopia. A case of lookism? The way he narrates this one too: "But these were English birds and they couldn't understand the weird African language the monkeys spoke." A case of racism? As whimsical as this story might seem, there are bullying, toxic relationships, bias against idiots (thus the title), and revenge (is a dish best served cold). Well, that's only my hypotheses. Despite all that speculation, if you dig further and deeper, you'll find a hidden gem. And that is... the Golden Rule ' a maxim we all know by heart and might be the heart of the story too!

Review # 2 was written on 2017-11-09 00:00:00 Joseph Bazan Unfortunately, I don't have any rose-tinted glasses for this one. So, as an adult, all I could think of is, "Dahl, what were you on??" Mr. Twit was a twit. He was born a twit. And, now at the age of sixty, he was a bigger twit than ever. The Twits are ugly people - through and through. They think nothing of animal neglect or outright abuse. They are horrible to each other and everyone around them. They own a troop of trained monkeys and take particular delight in forcing the poor animals into doing difficult (and painful) tricks. Well, the final straw landed on the camel's back (so to speak). The monkeys are fed up. They (along with a few friends) seek revenge through creative and inventive methods. Much like The Magic Finger, the character's vengeance is swift, clever and almost disproportionately brutal. And while it was cute because the animals were inventive and the evil folks certainly got their comeuppance, it still had me raising my eyebrows. Kids books were so not PG back in the day. I did, however, enjoy Dahl's level of pettiness. In real life, he hated beards. Thought them dirty and nasty. So, when he really wanted to convey just how disgusting the Twits were, he would throw in details like this: By sticking out his tongue and curling it sideways to explore the hairy jungle around his mouth, he was always able to find a tasty morsel here and there to nibble on. YouTube | Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat @miranda_reads