Authors Like Roald Dahl

Read it beside the Oompa-Loompa songs in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: the same rhymed verdicts on bad behaviour, the same punishments wildly out of proportion, more than a century earlier. The difference is that Hoffmann’s targets are only children, while Dahl’s worst villains are usually the adults.

The writer closest to Dahl’s view of childhood: the adults in charge are tyrants, and the children are cleverer and more ruthless than anyone suspects. Both deliver the punishment in a few deadpan lines and move on. Saki suits adults who loved Dahl as children and want the grown-up version.

If your Dahl is Someone Like You and Kiss Kiss rather than Matilda, Collier is the nearest match: domestic murder, a bargain or a wager, and a final line that turns everything over. Dahl himself introduced the 1980 Tales of the Unexpected episode made from “Back for Christmas”.

Dahl’s adult stories and Jackson’s share a method: an ordinary setting, a calm voice and a last page that changes everything before it. Merricat also has something of a Dahl child about her — clever, vengeful and entirely sure she is right. Jackson is darker and leaves more unsaid.

Pippi and Matilda are cousins: girls who are stronger or cleverer than the adults around them and use it. Lindgren’s world is warmer than Dahl’s and her anarchy rarely turns cruel, which makes her the writer for readers who want the freedom without the revenge.

Aiken shares Dahl’s melodrama: villains who are entirely villainous, children left alone with them, and a rescue the children arrange for themselves. She writes more adventure and less comedy, which suits readers who loved the peril in The Witches more than the jokes.

Like Dahl, Ibbotson pairs an orphan with cruel or ridiculous relatives and lets magic or luck even the score. Her witches and ghosts are as grotesque as his but rarely as frightening, and her orphans are rescued by kindness as often as by cunning: Dahl’s comedy with softer edges.

Holes has Dahl’s structure: a hapless child, adults who abuse their power, and a plot that gives each of them exactly what they deserve. Sachar’s comedy is drier and his plotting more intricate, with a family curse that pays off across a century.

The useful counterpoint. Dahl turns neglectful parents into grotesques like the Wormwoods and lets the child escape by magic; Wilson writes the same neglect as it happens in real families, with a child who still loves the adult letting her down. Reading the two side by side shows what Dahl’s jokes leave out.

A direct line on paper: Dahl co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Cottrell-Boyce wrote the book’s sequels. His children face money, grief and absurd adults with Dahl’s inventiveness but none of his cruelty.