“So she is,” said Mr. Wonka. “Ah, well, there’s nothing we can do about that.”

  “Good gracious!” cried Charlie. “Look at poor Veruca Salt and Mr. Salt and Mrs. Salt! They’re simply covered with garbage!”

  “And here comes Mike Teavee!” said Grandpa Joe. “Good heavens! What have they done to him? He’s about ten feet tall and thin as a wire!”

  “They’ve overstretched him on the gum-stretching machine,” said Mr. Wonka. “How very careless.”

  “But how dreadful for him!” cried Charlie.

  “Nonsense,” said Mr. Wonka, “he’s very lucky. Every basketball team in the country will be trying to get him. But now,” he added, “it is time we left these four silly children. I have something very important to talk to you about, my dear Charlie.” Mr. Wonka pressed another button, and the elevator swung upwards into the sky.

  30

  Charlie’s Chocolate Factory

  THE GREAT GLASS ELEVATOR was now hovering high over the town. Inside the elevator stood Mr. Wonka, Grandpa Joe, and little Charlie.

  “How I love my chocolate factory,” said Mr. Wonka, gazing down. Then he paused, and he turned around and looked at Charlie with a most serious expression on his face. “Do you love it, too, Charlie?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes,” cried Charlie, “I think it’s the most wonderful place in the whole world!”

  “I am very pleased to hear you say that,” said Mr. Wonka, looking more serious than ever. He went on staring at Charlie. “Yes,” he said, “I am very pleased indeed to hear you say that. And now I shall tell you why.” Mr. Wonka cocked his head to one side and all at once the tiny twinkling wrinkles of a smile appeared around the corners of his eyes, and he said, “You see, my dear boy, I have decided to make you a present of the whole place. As soon as you are old enough to run it, the entire factory will become yours.”

  Charlie stared at Mr. Wonka. Grandpa Joe opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.

  “It’s quite true,” Mr. Wonka said, smiling broadly now. “I really am giving it to you. That’s all right, isn’t it?”

  “Giving it to him?” gasped Grandpa Joe. “You must be joking.”

  “I’m not joking, sir. I’m deadly serious.”

  “But . . . but . . . why should you want to give your factory to little Charlie?”

  “Listen,” Mr. Wonka said, “I’m an old man. I’m much older than you think. I can’t go on forever. I’ve got no children of my own, no family at all. So who is going to run the factory when I get too old to do it myself? Someone’s got to keep it going—if only for the sake of the Oompa-Loompas. Mind you, there are thousands of clever men who would give anything for the chance to come in and take over from me, but I don’t want that sort of person. I don’t want a grown-up person at all. A grownup won’t listen to me; he won’t learn. He will try to do things his own way and not mine. So I have to have a child. I want a good sensible loving child, one to whom I can tell all my most precious candy-making secrets—while I am still alive.”

  “So that is why you sent out the Golden Tickets!” cried Charlie.

  “Exactly!” said Mr. Wonka. “I decided to invite five children to the factory, and the one I liked best at the end of the day would be the winner!”

  “But Mr. Wonka,” stammered Grandpa Joe, “do you really and truly mean that you are giving the whole of this enormous factory to little Charlie? After all. . . .”

  “There’s no time for arguments!” cried Mr. Wonka. “We must go at once and fetch the rest of the family—Charlie’s father and his mother and anyone else that’s around! They can all live in the factory from now on! They can all help to run it until Charlie is old enough to do it by himself! Where do you live, Charlie?”

  Charlie peered down through the glass elevator at the snow-covered houses that lay below. “It’s over there,” he said, pointing. “It’s that little cottage right on the edge of the town, the tiny little one. . . .”

  “I see it!” cried Mr. Wonka, and he pressed some more buttons and the elevator shot down toward Charlie’s house.

  “I’m afraid my mother won’t come with us,” Charlie said sadly.

  “Why ever not?”

  “Because she won’t leave Grandma Josephine and Grandma Georgina and Grandpa George.”

  “But they must come too.”

  “They can’t,” Charlie said. “They’re very old and they haven’t been out of bed for twenty years.”

  “Then we’ll take the bed along as well, with them in it,” said Mr. Wonka. “There’s plenty of room in this elevator for a bed.”

  “You couldn’t get the bed out of the house,” said Grandpa Joe. “It won’t go through the door.”

  “You mustn’t despair!” cried Mr. Wonka. “Nothing is impossible! You watch!”

  The elevator was now hovering over the roof of the Bucket’s little house.

  “What are you going to do?” cried Charlie.

  “I’m going right on in to fetch them,” said Mr. Wonka.

  “How?” asked Grandpa Joe.

  “Through the roof,” said Mr. Wonka, pressing another button.

  “No!” shouted Charlie.

  “Stop!” shouted Grandpa Joe.

  CRASH went the elevator, right down through the roof of the house into the old people’s bedroom. Showers of dust and broken tiles and bits of wood and cockroaches and spiders and bricks and cement went raining down on the three old ones who were lying in bed, and each of them thought that the end of the world was come. Grandma Georgina fainted, Grandma Josephine dropped her false teeth, Grandpa George put his head under the blanket, and Mr. and Mrs. Bucket came rushing in from the next room.

  “Save us!” cried Grandma Josephine.

  “Calm yourself, my darling wife,” said Grandpa Joe, stepping out of the elevator. “It’s only us.”

  “Mother!” cried Charlie, rushing into Mrs. Bucket’s arms. “Mother! Mother! Listen to what’s happened! We’re all going back to live in Mr. Wonka’s factory and we’re going to help him to run it and he’s given it all to me and . . . and . . . and . . . and. . . .”

  “What are you talking about?” said Mrs. Bucket.

  “Just look at our house!” cried poor Mr. Bucket. “It’s in ruins!”

  “My dear sir,” said Mr. Wonka, jumping forward and shaking Mr. Bucket warmly by the hand, “I’m so very glad to meet you. You mustn’t worry about your house. From now on, you’re never going to need it again, anyway.”

  “Who is this crazy man?” screamed Grandma Josephine. “He could have killed us all.”

  “This,” said Grandpa Joe, “is Mr. Willy Wonka himself.”

  It took quite a time for Grandpa Joe and Charlie to explain to everyone exactly what had been happening to them all day. And even then they all refused to ride back to the factory in the elevator.

  “I’d rather die in my bed!” shouted Grandma Josephine.

  “So would I!” cried Grandma Georgina.

  “I refuse to go!” announced Grandpa George.

  So Mr. Wonka and Grandpa Joe and Charlie, taking no notice of their screams, simply pushed the bed into the elevator. They pushed Mr. and Mrs. Bucket in after it. Then they got in themselves. Mr. Wonka pressed a button. The doors closed. Grandma Georgina screamed. And the elevator rose up off the floor and shot through the hole in the roof, out into the open sky.

  Charlie climbed onto the bed and tried to calm the three old people who were still petrified with fear. “Please don’t be frightened,” he said. “It’s quite safe. And we’re going to the most wonderful place in the world!”

  “Charlie’s right,” said Grandpa Joe.

  “Will there be anything to eat when we get there?” asked Grandma Josephine. “I’m starving! The whole family is starving!”

  “Anything to eat?” cried Charlie, laughing. “Oh, you just wait and see!”

  • • •

  For a complete list of this author’s books click here or visit

  www.penguin.com/dahlchecklist

  NOW THAT HE’S WON THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, WHAT’S NEXT FOR CHARLIE?

  1

  Mr. Wonka Goes Too Far

  THE LAST TIME WE SAW CHARLIE, he was riding high above his home town in the Great Glass Elevator. Only a short while before, Mr. Wonka had told him that the whole gigantic fabulous Chocolate Factory was his, and now our small friend was returning in triumph with his entire family to take over. The passengers in the Elevator (just to remind you) were:

  Charlie Bucket,

  our hero.

  Mr. Willy Wonka,

  chocolate-maker extraordinary.

  Mr. and Mrs. Bucket,

  Charlie’s father and mother.

  Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine,

  Mr. Bucket’s father and mother.

  Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina,

  Mrs. Bucket’s father and mother.

  Grandma Josephine, Grandma Georgina and Grandpa George were still in bed, the bed having been pushed on board just before take off. Grandpa Joe, as you remember, had gotten out of bed to go around the Chocolate Factory with Charlie.

  The Great Glass Elevator was a thousand feet up and cruising nicely. The sky was a brilliant blue. Everybody on board was wildly excited at the thought of going to live in the famous Chocolate Factory. Grandpa Joe was singing. Charlie was jumping up and down. Mr. and Mrs. Bucket were smiling for the first time in years, and the three old ones in the bed were grinning at one another with pink toothless gums.

  “What in the world keeps this thing up in the air?” croaked Grandma Josephine.

  “Skyhooks,” said Mr. Wonka.

  “You amaze me,” said Grandma Josephine.

  “Dear lady,” said Mr. Wonka, “you are new to the scene. When you have been with us a little longer, nothing will amaze you.”

  “These skyhooks,” said Grandma Josephine. “I assume one end is hooked onto this contraption we’re riding in. Right?”

  “Right,” said Mr. Wonka.

  “What’s the other end hooked onto?” said Grandma Josephine.

  “Every day,” said Mr. Wonka, “I get deafer and deafer. Remind me, please, to call up my ear doctor the moment we get back.”

  “Charlie,” said Grandma Josephine. “I don’t think I trust this gentleman very much.”

  “Nor do I,” said Grandma Georgina. “He footles around.”

  Charlie leaned over the bed and whispered to the two old women. “Please,” he said, “don’t spoil everything. Mr. Wonka is a fantastic man. He’s my friend. I love him.”

  “Charlie’s right,” whispered Grandpa Joe, joining the group. “Now you be quiet, Josie, and don’t make trouble.”

  “We must hurry!” said Mr. Wonka. “We have so much time and so little to do! No! Wait! Strike that! Reverse it! Thank you! Now back to the factory!” he cried, clapping his hands once and springing two feet in the air with two feet. “Back we fly to the factory! But we must go up before we can come down! We must go higher and higher!”

  “What did I tell you!” said Grandma Josephine. “The man’s cracked!”

  “Be quiet, Josie,” said Grandpa Joe. “Mr. Wonka knows exactly what he’s doing.”

  “He’s cracked as a crab!” said Grandma Georgina.

  “We must go higher!” said Mr. Wonka. “We must go tremendously high! Hold onto your stomachs!” He pressed a brown button. The Elevator shuddered, and then with a fearful whooshing noise it shot vertically upward like a rocket. Everybody clutched hold of everybody else and as the great machine gathered speed, the rushing whooshing sound of the wind outside grew louder and louder and shriller and shriller until it became a piercing shriek and you had to yell to make yourself heard.

  “Stop!” yelled Grandma Josephine. “Joe, you make him stop! I want to get off!”

  “Save us!” yelled Grandma Georgina.

  “Go down!” yelled Grandpa George.

  “No, no!” Mr. Wonka yelled back. “We’ve got to go up!”

  “But why?” they all shouted at once. “Why up and not down?”

  “Because the higher we are when we start coming down, the faster we’ll be going when we hit,” said Mr. Wonka. “We’ve got to be going at an absolutely sizzling speed when we hit!”

  “When we hit what?” they cried.

  “The factory, of course,” answered Mr. Wonka.

  “You must be whackers!” said Grandma Josephine. “We’ll all be pulpified!”

  “We’ll be scrambled like eggs!” said Grandma Georgina.

  “That,” said Mr. Wonka, “is a chance we shall have to take.”

  “You’re joking,” said Grandma Josephine. “Tell us you’re joking.”

  “Madam,” said Mr. Wonka, “I never joke.”

  “Oh, my dears!” cried Grandma Georgina. “We’ll be lixivated, every one of us!”

  “More than likely,” said Mr. Wonka.

  Grandma Josephine screamed and disappeared under the bedclothes. Grandma Georgina clutched Grandpa George so tight he changed shape. Mr. and Mrs. Bucket stood hugging each other, speechless with fright. Only Charlie and Grandpa Joe kept moderately cool. They had traveled a long way with Mr. Wonka and had grown accustomed to surprises. But as the Great Elevator continued to streak upward, farther and farther away from the earth, even Charlie began to feel a trifle nervous. “Mr. Wonka!” he yelled above the noise. “What I don’t understand is why we’ve got to come down at such a terrific speed.”

  “My dear boy,” Mr. Wonka answered, “if we don’t come down at a terrific speed, we’ll never burst our way back in through the roof of the factory. It’s not easy to punch a hole in a roof as strong as that.”

  “But there’s a hole in it already,” said Charlie. “We made it when we came out.”

  “Then we shall make another,” said Mr. Wonka. “Two holes are better than one. Any mouse will tell you that.”

  Higher and higher rushed the Great Glass Elevator until soon they could see the countries and oceans of the earth spread out below them like a map. It was all very beautiful, but when you are standing on a glass floor looking down, it gives you a nasty feeling. Even Charlie was beginning to feel frightened now. He hung on tightly to Grandpa Joe’s hand and looked up anxiously into the old man’s face. “I’m scared, Grandpa,” he said.

  Grandpa Joe put an arm around Charlie’s shoulders and held him close. “So am I, Charlie,” he said.

  “Mr. Wonka!” Charlie shouted. “Don’t you think this is about high enough?”

  “Very nearly,” Mr. Wonka answered. “But not quite. Don’t talk to me now, please. Don’t disturb me. I must watch things very carefully at this stage. Split-second timing, my boy, that’s what it’s got to be. You see this green button. I must press it at exactly the right instant. If I’m just half a second late, then we’ll go too high!”

  “What happens if we go too high?” asked Grandpa Joe.

  “Do please stop talking and let me concentrate!” Mr. Wonka said.

  At that precise moment, Grandma Josephine poked her head out from under the sheets and peered over the edge of the bed. Through the glass floor she saw the entire continent of North America nearly two hundred miles below and looking no bigger than a piece of candy. “Someone’s got to stop this maniac,” she screeched, and she shot out a wrinkled old hand and grabbed Mr. Wonka by the coattails and yanked him backward onto the bed.

  “No, no,” cried Mr. Wonka, struggling to free himself. “Let me go! I have things to see to! Don’t disturb the pilot!”

  “You madman,” shrieked Grandma Josephine, shaking Mr. Wonka so fast that his head became a blur. “You get us back home this instant!”

  “Let me go!” cried Mr. Wonka. “I’ve got to press that button or we’ll go too high! Let me go! Let me go!” But Grandma Josephine hung on. “Charlie!” shouted Mr. Wonka. “Press the button! The green one! Quick, quick, quick!”

  Charlie leaped across the Elevator and banged his thumb down on the green button. But as he did so, the Elevator gave a mighty groan and rolled over onto its side, and the rushing whooshing noise stopped altogether and an eerie silence took its place.

  “Too late!” cried Mr. Wonka. “Oh, my goodness me, we’re cooked!” As he spoke, the bed with the three old ones in it and Mr. Wonka on top lifted gently off the floor and hung suspended in mid-air. Charlie and Grandpa Joe and Mr. and Mrs. Bucket also floated upward so that in a twink the entire company, as well as the bed, were floating around like balloons inside the Great Glass Elevator.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” said Mr. Wonka, floating about.

  “What happened?” Grandma Josephine called out. She had floated clear of the bed and was hovering near the ceiling in her nightshirt.

  “Did we go too far?” Charlie asked.

  “Too far?” cried Mr. Wonka. “I’ll say we went too far! You know where we’ve gone, my friends? We’ve gone into orbit!”

  They gaped, they gasped, they stared. They were too flabbergasted to speak.

  “We are now rushing around the earth at seventeen thousand miles an hour,” Mr. Wonka said. “How does that grab you?”

  “I’m choking!” gasped Grandma Georgina. “I can’t breathe!”

  “Of course you can’t,” said Mr. Wonka. “There’s no air up here.” He sort of swam across under the ceiling to a button marked OXYGEN. He pressed it. “You’ll be all right now,” he said. “Breathe away.”

  “This is the queerest feeling,” Charlie said, swimming about. “I feel like a bubble.”

  “It’s great,” said Grandpa Joe. “It feels as though I don’t weigh anything at all.”

  “You don’t,” said Mr. Wonka. “None of us weighs anything—not even one ounce.”

  “What piffle!” said Grandma Georgina. “I weigh eighty-seven pounds exactly.”

  “Not now you don’t,” said Mr. Wonka. “You are completely weightless.”

  The three old ones, Grandpa George, Grandma Georgina and Grandma Josephine were trying frantically to get back into the bed, but without success. The bed was floating about in mid-air. They, of course, were also floating, and every time they got above the bed and tried to lie down, they simply floated up out of it. Charlie and Grandpa Joe were hooting with laughter. “What’s so funny?” said Grandma Josephine.