The Gremlins: The Lost Walt Disney Production (Flight Lieutenant Roald Dahl, 1943)

After Summer Magic I had a hankering for a bit more Disney magic, so I plucked a book off the shelf called The Gremlins, which is a fictional tale by Roald Dahl, which was originally to have been an animated movie made with Disney during World War II. The movie never came to fruition, so the book was published instead, and it’s an interesting curio.

A meeting between Walt Disney and Roald Dahl would seem to be quite a historic one, but this was before Dahl had published anything, and he was credited as Flight Lieutenant on the book’s cover. It’s as odd as Dahl writing a James Bond movie – he did get around a bit it seems! It’s a long time since I read anything by Dahl, back when I was a child I remember enjoying The Twits and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Gremlins is an entertaining, brief read – more interesting is the introduction by Leonard Maltin detailing the history of the book and failed movie. I’m glad I have this book and have read it as part of my collection of Disney DVDs and books, as it is part of the interesting way Disney participated in the war effort. The characters in the Gremlins are cute and probably would have translated well into film, but the war themes may have been a bit difficult to handle successfully.