ShmoopTube

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Underdog stories have a long history going all the way back to the Battle of [Big book falls down]

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the giant Goliath versus the not so giant David. We still regret putting

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money on that one. A more recent version of this kind of story can be found in

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Roald Dahl's 1988 novel Matilda. David might have had a slingshot that served [The Matilda book slides into view]

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him well but Matilda has something even better.

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Telekinetic powers woo, even sounds cool. The book follows the adventures of a

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little girl named Matilda, at the start of the book she hasn't realized she has [Matilda stood in a library]

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any special powers, she's just a precocious clever kid luckily he don't

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need telekinesis to read. Although Matilda has her teacher Miss Honey on

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her side, most of the adults in her life i.e. her parents and her headmistress have

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no interest in helping her genius flourish. As a consequence Matilda gets a [Matilda and her teacher stood together and her parents and Ms. Trunchbull stood as a group]

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bit of a taste for revenge and uses her cleverness to pull a bunch of pranks on

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her father, from dyeing his hair an awful color to gluing his hat to his head. [Matilda's father looks in the mirror and is shocked]

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Although to be fair those two pranks kind of cancel each other out there

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right... No one can see your awful hair if there's a hat glued.. Yeah you get it...

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As you might imagine once Matilda discovers her telekinetic powers her pranks get [Matilda making milk and cereal float around her]

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a bit more um, advanced.. After all it'd be a shame to let those towers go

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to waste right, she almost have to prank people, it's her duty... Roald Dahl's books often

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sold well and Matilda was no exception. In the UK alone it sold over half a

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million paperbacks in six months breaking all previous records for a work

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of children's fiction. It was adapted into a 1996 film and a stage musical

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based on the novel has been running since 2010. We're not too surprised by [Picture of the musical show]

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the success of Matilda, she's not the first child who's been frustrated by

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bullies and obnoxious authority figures so she's very relateable and kids get a

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real kick out of seeing those meanies get their just desserts. Of course that's not to [Book flies into the air and hits the teacher in the head]

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say we condone acts of revenge on the off chance you do happen to have

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telekinetic powers please ya know, use them responsibly. [Matilda taking someones phone out their back pocket with telekinesis]

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