I put a poll on google plus to see if I should review Fantastic Mr Fox or Esio Trot and well... Esio Trot won! so here's my review.
Esio Trot
Book Review
Esio Trot is another of Roald Dahl's children’s classics, it was first published in 1990 by Jonathan Cape. It as 62 pages and is illustrated by Quentin Blake, the price is roughly £4.00
Characters
Mr Hoppy is a very shy man who lives alone in an apartment building he grows beautiful flowers on his balcony.
Mrs Silver is a very kind woman who has a tortoise called Alfie which she loves very much.
Alfie is Mrs Silver’s tortoise.
The Pet Shop Owner owns the pet shop which sells the tortoises to Mr Hoppy
The Tortoise Catcher is a very long, extendable device Mr Hoppy invents to hold tortoises.
Story
Mrs Silver lived in the apartment directly below Mr Hoppy’s, Mrs Silver’s balcony jutted a bit further out so they were able to speak to each other. One day Mr Hoppy was speaking to Mrs Silver and she said that she yearned for Alfie to grow bigger since he only gained three ounces in eleven years, this gave Mr Hoppy a plan, he said he knew a way for tortoises to grow, he gave Mrs Silver a piece of paper and he said to read this to Alfie three times a day and he will grow twice as big in a few months. This was what the piece of paper said:
ESIO TROT, ESIO TROT,
TEG REGGIB REGGIB!
EMOC NO, ESIO TROT,
WORG PU, FFUP PU, TOOHS PU!
PU, WOLB PU, LLEWS PU!
EGROG! ELZZUG! FFUTS! PLUG!
TUP NO TAF, ESIO TROT, TUP NO TAF!
TEG NO, TEG NO, ELBBOG DOOF!
This is ‘Tortoise Language’, according to Mr Hoppy tortoises are very backward creatures so if you want them to understand what you say, you have to say it backwards, so the translation is ‘Tortoise, tortoise, get bigger bigger! Come on, tortoise, grow up, puff up, shoot up! Spring up, blow up, swell up! Gorge! Guzzle! Stuff! Gulp! Put on fat, tortoise, put on fat! Get on, get on, gobble food!’ Mrs Silver said she would try it, so Mr Hoppy got to work, first, he went to the pet shop and bought One-hundred-and-Forty different sized tortoises, then he made the Tortoise Catcher.
The next day, Mr Hoppy found a tortoise in his collection that was exactly 2 ounces more than Alfie, then using the Tortoise Catcher he took Alfie from Mrs Silver’s balcony and replaced him with the almost identical tortoise number 2.
Every week he got another tortoise from his collection exactly 2 ounces heavier than the last and replaced it on Mrs Silver’s balcony. At the end of the seventh week, Alfie (or not) had become 27 ounces in weight! But because Mr Hoppy’s plan was so slow, Mrs Silver had not noticed the growth, so when Mr Hoppy told Mrs silver to weigh ‘Alfie’ she came out astonished and asked Mr Hoppy to come down and have tea, and as you’d expect Mr Hoppy asked Mrs Silver to be his wife, and of course she said yes, and Mrs Silver became Mrs Hoppy and they lived happily ever after…
The real Alfie had been bought by a little girl, and she still has him now (or at least when Roald Dahl finished his book)
Conclusion
I love this book, it was one of my first ever read, but there is one thing that I disliked even when I was about 6, it’s the fact that Mr Hoppy faked the tortoises growth, It’s extremely dishonest especially to someone you want to be your wife, but I suppose he couldn’t have gone and told Mr Silver because she would have obviously split up with him.
Roald Dahl made an object like the tortoise catcher, but it was to pick things up from the floor to save his painful back.
Merci Beaucoup
Kalm
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