Product Description

This is the tale of the Twits: Mr and Mrs Twit, an obnoxious couple who spend their lives trying to outdo each other in nastiness. But the Muggle-Wump monkeys and the Roly-Poly bird hatch an ingenious plan to give them just the ghastly surprise they deserve.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3118 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Roald Dahl has such an unusual first name due to fact that his parents spelt his name wrong on the Register of Births. From this non-literary background came one of the masters of children's literature.

The Twits is one of his many successful and highly entertaining books. The Twits are a couple that nobody would like to know. They are hairy, dirty, smelly and generally unpleasant. Roald Dahl's characters are possibly the most horrid people you will ever read about. Mr and Mrs Twit spend their days inventing new ways to be be nasty to each other. Each time Mrs Twit does something bad to Mr Twit, he just invents something worse to do to her. The Twits are not only unpleasant towards each other but they also hate animals. It is because of the Twits' attitude towards animals that we see their really awful side: Mr Twit keeps a family of monkeys that have to spend their days upside down and Mrs Twit likes to make pies with freshly caught birds.

Dahl's story, as is characteristic with all his books, has a happy ending. Only how will the animals beat the Twits? --Jon Smith

Review
The nasty streak that lurks in Dahl's stories for adults and children comes out with a vengeance in his characterization of Mr. and Mrs. Twit and the nasty tricks they play on one another. Dahl's first sentence - "What a lot of hairy-faced men there are around nowadays" - might suggest that the manuscript has been sitting in a drawer for a decade; but if so it hasn't mellowed. Dahl will lose most reading-aloud adults straight off with his description of all the disgusting leftovers more or less permanently lodged in bathless Mr. Twit's beard. Ugly Mrs. Twit with her ugly thoughts is no more attractive. She puts her glass eye in her husband's beer glass and "cackles" (she would cackle) "I told you I was watching you. I've got eyes everywhere." He in turn puts a frog in her bed. She feeds him worms for spaghetti. He, borrowing an old ploy, gradually builds up her walking stick so she'll think she is shrinking. To cure her of the purported "shrinks" he subjects her to a stretching - which, however, backfires for him. Then Dalai turns to the birds, whom Mr. Twit catches for his pies by putting glue on their tree branches. The Twits also keep a family of monkeys they train to perform upside down. At last the birds and monkeys do in the Twits with an ingenious punishment that fits their crimes. Dahl describes all this unredeemed viciousness with a spirited, malevolent glee that plays shamelessly, and no doubt successfully, to kids' malicious impulses and unmerciful sense of justice. (Kirkus Reviews)

Synopsis
This is the tale of the Twits: Mr and Mrs Twit, an obnoxious couple who spend their lives trying to outdo each other in nastiness. But the Muggle-Wump monkeys and the Roly-Poly bird hatch an ingenious plan to give them just the ghastly surprise they deserve.

Customer Reviews

the best book in the world
BOOK TITLE; THE TWITS
AUTHOR: ROALD DAHL
ILLUSTRATOR: Quentin Blake

Mrs Twit and Mr Twit look just like stone-age people or cavemen. I think they would be the ugliest people you have ever seen. This book is the funniest story I have ever heard. I would recommend this to any ages.

By Isaac E age 6

The Twits
This is one of Roald Dahl's most marvellous stories! You wil be excited with the way this book is written because it was funny, it had a lot of detail and also included some fantastic pictures. I love the ending because the house turns upside down and the Twits shrank.
Tahmin 3J

Hairy!
Plot: Mr and Mrs Twit are always playing pranks on each other like Mr Twit put a frog under Mrs Twit's bed sheets so she put some worms in her husband's spaghetti and she covered it in tomato sauce, sprinkling cheese on top! The Twits are a pair of revolting people. They never wash, they hate children and they catch birds for yucky bird pie!

An author fact: Roald Dahl kept an old school exercise book for putting in his book ideas; for The Twits it simply said `do something against beards'!

Rating and recommendation: I would rate it 7/ 10; I would recommend it to all Roald Dahl fans.