George's Marvellous Medicine

by Roald Dahl

Leave it to Roald Dahl to invent a little boy that gets the best kind of revenge against his mean old grandma. George is left alone with the bitter old hag while his mother goes into town for groceries and his father, a farmer, is out in the field.

George is responsible for giving his grandma her medicine at 11 o'clock. Until then, there is still plenty of time for the old woman to torture her grandson by sending him for tea (one spoonful of sugar, no milk), then for extra sugar, then a saucer, then a spoon. When she lets on that she may be a witch, George loses nerve and backs out of the room

He then has an idea to cook his own patch of medicine to serve up to grandma. He goes through all the rooms in the house, throwing every kind of liquid and creme into a huge saucepan - everything from shampoo to shoe paste. To get the color right, he adds brown paint to the brew. When his grandmother has a spoonful of it, she suddenly starts growing, and growing, and growing, until her head breaks through the roof. When she insists that she grew due to her alleged magic powers, George proves her wrong by giving some medicine to a chicken that then grows to enormous height, as well.

At this point, his parents return and while horrified by grandma's appearance, George's father is fascinated by the huge chicken and the marketing possibilities that comes with it. He wants to recreate the medicine with George, but the boy cannot seam to remember all the ingredients and the next patches make the trial chickens' legs or neck grow and - on the last try - shrink completely. The family is ready to give up.

It is then that the mean grandma thinks the family is keeping what she thinks to be tea from her and snatches the entirety of the last patch of medicine and gulps it down. This concoction makes her shrink and shrink and shrink until she disappears into thin air.

7/10