• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

  • By: Roald Dahl
  • Narrated by: Douglas Hodge
  • Length: 3 hrs and 18 mins
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (3,244 ratings)

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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory  By  cover art

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

By: Roald Dahl
Narrated by: Douglas Hodge
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Editorial reviews

"Douglas Hodge delivers Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in a briskly melodic canter, and his rendering holds its own against memories of cinema's Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp." (Gregory Maguire, The New York Times Book Review)

Publisher's summary

Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory is opening at last!

But only five lucky children will be allowed inside. And the winners are: Augustus Gloop, an enormously fat boy whose hobby is eating; Veruca Salt, a spoiled-rotten brat whose parents are wrapped around her little finger; Violet Beauregarde, a dim-witted gum-chewer with the fastest jaws around; Mike Teavee, a toy pistol-toting gangster-in-training who is obsessed with television; and Charlie Bucket, our hero, a boy who is honest and kind, brave and true, and good and ready for the wildest time of his life!

©1964 Roald Dahl (P)2013 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Rich in humor, acutely observant, Dahl lets his imagination rip in fairyland." (The New York Times)

“Roald Dahl sometimes shared a tonal kinship with Ogden Nash, and he could demonstrate a verbal inventiveness nearly Seussian...[His] stories work better in audio than in print.” (The New York Times)

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What listeners say about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Average customer ratings
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SQUARE SWEETS THAT LOOK ROUND

MATURITY IS HIGHLY OVER RATED
NO ARGUMENTS PLEASE
I have listened to several of Dahl's books and liked them all. This one is my favorite so far. You can not compare Dahl to other writers because he does not write like other writers. He has an imagination that is all his own and very little is borrowed from anyone else. This book is especially unique and I know of no other like it. It is entertaining and heart warming. If you read only one Dahl book, let it be this one.

IT WILL ALL COME OUT IN THE WASH

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56 people found this helpful

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fanciful fun for five-year-olds

Would you listen to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory again? Why?

We have listened to this book over and over again! The author is very engaging with voices and sound effects able keep the attention of even the youngest audience.

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12 people found this helpful

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Dahl is my favorite writer of children's novels

Picking the best of Roald Dahl's children's novels is impossible because there are so many great ones. My personal favorite is The BFG, but Charlie and the Chocolate Factory may be more famous because of it's movie adaptation Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. (Maryrose Wood's The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series has become my favorite contemporary children's book series.)

Roald Dahl died 27 years ago, but his books remain very popular throughout the English speaking world. That popularity is richly deserved.

My regret is that 5 of my six grandchildren are now too old for Roald Dahl's novels. But I am not!

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11 people found this helpful

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Top Shelf Narration. Professional Production

Complete professional narration. With sound effects and the many voices of the narrator who is a true professional actor makes all the difference we listen to this book over and over due to the quality of the production.

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7 people found this helpful

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Nice story

It is a little bit different from the movie but still a nice story. It was very nice

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love the book, do not love the reading

This is one of our favorite books. We did not like this reading because the reader went from soft voices to yelling and we had to keep turning the sound up and down. Very annoying.

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Amazing and absolutely wonderful

It was so much more in depth than the the movie and so much more fantastic.

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4 people found this helpful

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I love Roald Dahl's books! It is marvelous

It was awesome i love books and especially Roald Dahl's. If he was still alive I would want his autograph and congratulate him!

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Least favorite Roald Dahl book

It's a Roald Dahl book, so it's not terrible, but it's far from his best. Unless you're planning on reading all of them, skip this one. Don't think you'll automatically love it because you love one of the movies. It's boring (less boring than Danny the Champion of the World, maybe, but definitely more so than the other 8 I read), and worse, it's super preachy. Believe it or not, they actually toned that element way down in the movies. In the book, the Oompa Loompas go on and on and on and on. I always wondered what Dahl's beef was with chewing gum, and why he considered it a character flaw on par with extreme gluttony or bossy, greedy entitlement, but apparently that's nothing compared what he thought of television. He doesn't suggest that kids should watch less. No, he absolutely rants about how only the worst kind of parent would even own one.

I'm two books away from finishing his entire fiction collection, so I'm going to read the sequel next and hope it's better. Unless you're on a similar quest, forget this one and pick up James and the Giant Peach, The BFG, Matilda or one of the collections of shorts instead. Those are all amazing.

Douglas Hodge was great though. I hope he's narrated more books I'd be interested in. I'll have to look.

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This aidio book is very good! Try this!<br />I love it!

This aidio book is very good! Try this!
I love Roald Dahl 's books indeed! good good good good

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