By Greg James and Chris Smith
Illustrator Emily Jones
Based on the book The Twits by Roald Dahl
4Rbooks 3.5/6 grades 5-8
Amazon 4.7/5 grades level 3-7
Goodreads 4/26
Common Sense Media Not Yet Reviewed
244 pages
Synopsis
The Twits are a mean and nasty couple. Not just to other people, but to each other. They live in a house away from the town, with no windows so they don’t have to see anyone else, and no one can look in on them. They don’t take care of themselves, their house is a mess, their garden is horrible, and they don’t care.
And then the Lovelies buy the house next. Mr. and Mrs. Lovely are a nice and kind couple who just want the world to be a better place. One of their mottos is “Everyone is lovely inside.” They have twin children, Ruff and Tumble, who are not always as lovely and they think their parents don’t get that some people are just not nice. They move in, painting their house yellow with a purple door, and the twins make the treehouse their bedroom.
The Twits hate that they have neighbors and hate the Lovelies even more. The Lovelies think the Twits are misunderstood and they can find the loveliness hiding within them. Each side will do what it takes to prove their point.
Parental Guidelines
The Twits are a married couple who are very mean to each other. They go out of their way to say horrible things and play terrible tricks.
Mrs. Twit sets a trap for Mr. Twit that end up with him getting stung by hundreds of wasps on his bottom which caused him to run outside with his pants down and sit in the pond.
When the Lovelies move in next door, the Twits devise ways to get rid of them.
The Lovelies twins, Ruff and Tumble, break into the Twits home.
The Twits drink an enormous amount of beer on one particular day.
The Lovelies begin as a forgiving couple, believing that everyone is lovely inside, but the Twits change their minds and they devise ways to pay them back.
The Twits are trapped as a statue at the end of the book, supposedly forever (obviously they will die at some point).
Recommendation
This is a sequel to the novel The Twits by Roald Dahl, a book, I have to admit, I’ve never read. This is a silly, fun, novel filled with lots of gross, juvenile humor. As such, I feel it would be tough classroom read for a teacher. Amazon has the grade level as 3-7 but I would not have this in a 3rd or 4th grade classroom library.
I would recommend parents and teachers read this book first, just to calculate your comfort level with the pranks, attitudes, and verbal abuse. It has potential as a classroom or family discussion book over the nature of good and evil. What made the Twits so mean? Why are the Lovelies so lovely? How much of our personality and disposition is based on innate qualities and how much is based on environment? Is it every right to repay evil with evil? Was the Lovelies final solution appropriate and fair, or just as evil?
It’s an easy read with fun illustrations and lots of emphasis on words in the text with bold and unique fonts.
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