Boekverslag : Roald Dahl - Royal Jelly
De taal ervan is Nederlands en het aantal woorden bedraagt 1627 woorden.
De taal ervan is Nederlands en het aantal woorden bedraagt 1627 woorden.
Samenvatting
Bookreport
Summary
Mabel Taylor and her husband Albert have had a baby. They tried for nine years and finally she got pregnant. There is only one problem, the baby doesn't want to eat. She only drinks one ounce a time. And she is loosing weight. The baby is six weeks old and weight less than two pounds than she did when she was born.
They have been to a doctor with her, but he said everything was all right.
That night he read in a bee's magazine about royal jelly. Royal jelly is a substance which larvae are being feed with. The future workers are getting it only for three days. The larvae, which are destined to become queens, are fed with royal jelly throughout the whole of their larval period. Royal jelly must be a substance of tremendous nourishing power, for on this diet alone, the honeybee larva increases in weight fifteen hundred times in five days. This is as if a seven and a half pound baby should increase in that time to five tons.
Mabel is very tired. Albert tells her to go to bed. He will feed the baby at two and at six o'clock.
The next morning when Mabel comes down, Albert tells her the good news, the baby has eaten the whole bottle. Mabel is very happy.
Albert has always been fascinating by bees. In his garden he has two hundred and forty hives. He never had to use smoke when there was work to do inside a hive, and he never wore gloves on his hands or a net over his head.
The rest of the following day the baby drinks every time the whole bottle.
That night Albert tells his wife what the secret is, what the baby had made drinking. He mixed the milk with royal jelly. Mabel doesn't like it. She looks at Albert and noticed that he looks a bit like a bee himself. But she thinks a lot of people are going to look like their pets.
The next time it is feeding time the baby isn't satisfied with four ounce. The baby loves her new food and even doesn't want to stop eating. So Albert makes an other bottle. This time one with eight ounce. After that the baby goes to sleep.
Mabel doesn't want the baby to have more royal jelly, because the baby's weight is increasing very fast, but the arms and legs do not grow in proportion. Albert says that it can't do any harm. He takes it every day, and that is the reason that they have the baby after nine years of trying.
Mabel tells him to stay away from the baby. And she looks at her husband's face and neck. There was no skin showing at all on the neck, not even at the sides below the ears. The whole of it, to a point where it disappeared into the collar of the shirt, was covered all the way around with those short silky hairs, yellow black.
The baby is fat and white and comatose, like some gigantic grub that is approaching the end of its larval life and will soon emerge into the world complete with mandibles and wings. Albert says to cover the baby up, they don't want there little queen to catch a cold.
Main characters
Mabel:
Mabel Taylor is de wife from Albert Taylor.
She has got a baby since six weeks. She is very happy with her. Mabel and Albert have tried nine years to get a baby. So now she finally has it, she gets very worried when the baby doesn't want to eat. The baby is losing weight every day. Mabel gets exhausted, and goes to bed early, when she hears the next morning that the baby is eating she is so happy. Every time she feed the baby she runs to Albert to tell him how much the baby eat this time.
When she sees her baby and her husband changing she gets scared and wants to protect her baby. She tells Albert to stay away from the baby and to give normal food to her and not milk with royal jelly.
Albert:
Albert Taylor has been fascinated by anything that has to do with bees all his life. As a small boy he used often to catch them in his bare hands and go running with them into the house to show to his mother, and sometimes he would put them on his face and let hem crawl about over his cheeks and neck, and the astonishing thing about it all was that he never got stung. On the contrary, the bees seemed to enjoy being with him. They never tried to fly away, and to get rid of them he would have to brush them off gently with his fingers. Even then they would frequently return and settle again on his arm or hand or knee, any place where the skin was bare.
As he grew older, Albert's fascination with bees developed into an obsession, and by the time he was twelve he had built his first hive. At the age of fourteen he was had no less than five hives. When he was eighteen he was started his own business. Now eleven years later he had two hundred and forty hives.
When the baby come he hasn't got much interest in it. He never feed the baby or helps his wife making the milk warm. Until the night he reads that royal jelly is good for increasing weight. Then he starts to make the milk for the baby with royal jelly in it.
He eats royal jelly himself to. That is why his wife got pregnant after nine years of trying. But after she got pregnant he didn't stop taking royal jelly, so at the end of the story he begins to look like a bee.
Theme
It is difficult to find the theme of royal jelly. Love for the baby plays a big role. The mother loves her baby very much. She doesn't like the fact that it is getting royal jelly, but because it is working she allows it. When the baby starts to change she doesn't want the baby to get royal jelly anymore. She protects it from Albert.
Albert loves the baby too. That's why he gave her the royal jelly. He also loves his bees. I think he loves his bees even more than he loves his child. The bees are very important in the story, if there weren't any bees the baby would not have had royal jelly. And if its true that Mabel and Albert got pregnant because Albert was taking royal jelly the baby would not have been born without the bees.
My opinion
It is a strange story. At the end you don't know what will happen with the baby.
It is a book what you read out in one time. After reading the book I had a lot of questions, but it is a funny book to read. I enjoyed it very much.
Concerning the writer
Roald Dahl was born on September 13, 1961 in Wales. He was the son of Norwegian immigrants. After he had finished a boarding school, he decided not to study, but to travel.
He worked for Shell and was stationed in East Africa.
While he was there the World War II broke out and Roald Dahl joined Britain's Royal Air Force as a pilot. After his serious aircrash in the desert, from which he kept his whole life backache, he was stationed in Washington. In Washington he was member of the British diplomatic corps. While he was in America he met the British author Forester, who encouraged him to draft a story about his most exciting adventure as a pilot. The story was bought by The Saturday Evening Post and his career as a writer began.
Roald Dahl spent the forties and the early fifties publishing short stories for adults. He became famous with two collections bizarre and fantastic stories: Someone like you and Kiss Kiss. He achieved his comical and atrocious effects by letting ordinary people react in a conventional way at exceptional unconventional situations.
After he established himself as a writer for adults, Roald Dahl began writing children stories in 1960, after his kids were born. His first two novels, James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory have been made into films. Roald Dahl was the winner of England's two most distinguished literary awards, the Whitbread Prize and the Children's Book Award. Seventeen of his works are perennial best sellers.
In 1953 he married the American filmactress Patricia Neal. In 1983 he got divorced from Patricia Neal and married Felicity Crosland
He lived more than thirty years at Great Missenden in an old farmhouse in a village not far from London. Roald Dahl died there at 23 November 1990.
Bibliography
Someone you like (1961)
Kiss Kiss (1962)
Over to you (1964)
My uncle Oswald (1979)
Sometimes never (1980)
Tales of the unexpected (1980)
Two fables (1976)
The bookseller/The surgeon (1988)
Memories with food at Gipsy House (1991)
For children:
The Gremlins (1943)
James and the Giant Peach (1961)
Charlie and the chocolate factory (1964)
The magic finger (1966)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (1970)
Charlie and the great glass elevator (1973)
Danny the champion of the world (1975)
The wonderful story of Henry Sugar (1977)
The enormous crocodile (1978)
The Twits (1980)
George's marvellous medicine (1981)
Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes (1982)
The BFG (1982)
The Witches (1983)
Dirty Beasts (1983)
Boy (1984)
The Giraffe and the Pelly and me (1985)
Going Solo (1986)
Matilda (1988)
Rhyme Stew (1989)
Esiotrot (1990)
The Minpins (1990)
The Vicar of Nibblewicke (1990)
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