The World's Most Scrumdiddlyumptious Storyteller
ROALD DAHL The Magic Finger
By the bestselling author of MATILDA
THE MAGIC FINGER
On the ground below the Greggs stood the four enormous ducks, as tall as men, and three of them were holding guns in their hands. One had Mr. Gregg's gun, one had Philip's gun, and one had William's gun.
The guns were all pointing right up at the nest.
"No! No! No!" called Mr. and Mrs. Gregg both together. "Don't shoot! Please don't shoot!"
"Why not?" said one of the ducks. "You are always shooting at us."
"Oh, but that's not the same!" said Mr. Gregg. "We are allowed to shoot ducks."
"Who allows you?" asked the duck.
"We allow each other," said Mr. Gregg.
"Very nice," said the duck. "And now we are going to allow each other to shoot you."
"A small gem of a book." "Enjoyably bizarre."
Chicago Sunday Tribune The New York Times
BOOKS FOR CHILDREN BY ROALD DAHL
James and the Giant Peach
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Magic Finger
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
Danny, the Champion of the World
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More
The Enormous Crocodile
The Twits
George's Marvelous Medicine
The BFG
Dirty Beasts
The Witches
Boy
The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me
Going Solo
Matilda
Rhyme Stew
Esio Trot
The Minpins
The Vicar of Nibbleswicke
ROALD DAHL
The Magic Finger
Illustrated by Tony Ross
Puffin Books
This Book is for Ophelia and Lucy
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
First published in the United States of America by HarperCollins Children's
Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, 1966
First published in Great Britain by Allen & Unwin, 1968
Published in Puffin Books (UK), 1974
Re-issued with new illustrations, 1989
Published in Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1993
10 987654321
Text copyright © Roald Dahl, 1966 Illustrations copyright © Tony Ross, 1989 All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Dahl, Roald.
The magic finger / by Roald Dahl; illustrated by Tony Ross. p. cm. (A Young Puffin)
Summary: Angered by a neighboring family's sport hunting, an eight-year-old girl turns her magic finger on them.
ISBN 0-14-036303-3
[1. HuntingFiction. 2. MagicFiction] I. Ross, Tonv. ill. II. Title. [PZ7.D1515Mag 1993] [Fie]de20 92-31443
Printed in the United States of America Set in Palatino
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The farm next to ours is owned by Mr and Mrs Gregg. The Greggs have two children, both of them boys. Their names are Philip and William. Sometimes I go over to their farm to play with them.
I am a girl and I am eight years old.
Philip is also
eight years old.
William is three years older. He is ten.
What?
Oh, all right, then.
He is eleven.
Last week, something very funny happened to the Gregg family. I am going to tell you about it as best I can.
Now the one thing that Mr Gregg and his two boys loved to do more than anything else was to go hunting. Every Saturday morning they would take their guns and go off into the woods to look for animals and birds to shoot. Even Philip, who was only eight years old, had a gun of his own.
I can't stand hunting. I just can't stand it. It doesn't seem right to me that men and boys should kill animals just for the fun they
get out of it. So I used to try to stop Philip and William from doing it. Every time I went over to their farm I would do my best to talk them out of it, but they only laughed at me.
I even said something about it once to Mr Gregg, but he just walked on past me as if I weren't there.
Then, one Saturday morning, I saw Philip and William coming out of the woods with their father, and they were carrying a lovely young deer.
This made me so cross that I started shouting at them.
The boys laughed and made faces at me, and Mr Gregg told me to go home and mind my own P's and Q's.
Well, that did it!
I saw red.
And before I was able to stop myself, I did something I never meant to do.
I PUT THE MAGIC FINGER ON THEM ALL!
Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I even put it on Mrs Gregg, who wasn't there. I put it on the whole Gregg family.
For months I had been telling myself that I would never put the Magic Finger upon anyone again - not after what happened to my teacher, old Mrs Winter.