ESIO  TROT by: Roald Dahl Reviewed by: Eva

Mr. Hoppy is a man who has a crush on the lady who lives below his apartment.  He is always sitting on his deck and watching her on her deck.  But Mrs. Silver (the lady who lives below Mr. Hoppy) has a different love.  She loves her pet tortoise Alfie!  The only thing she doesn't like about Alfie is he only weighs thirteen ounces.   Mr. Hoppy has to find a way to get Mrs. Silver to love him.  So he comes up with a plan.   I love this book because Roald Dahl is a very funny writer.  There is lots of great pictures in the book and the plot is really funny.  I like that at the beginning of the book there is also a little bit of real tortoise history. Tortoises were a common pet when the author’s kids were little.  I think that at the ending Mr. Hoppy should tell Mrs. Silver about his plan.  I also think that it’s funny that the author is English and he spells color “colour”.  This is the “spell” Mr. Hoppy used to make Alfie bigger: “ESIO TROT, ESIO TROT, TEG REGGIB REGGIB! EMOC NO, ESIO TROT, WORG PU, FFUP PU, LLEWS PU! EGROG! ELZZUG! FFUTS! PLUG! TUP NO TAF, ESIO TROT, TUP NO TAF! TEG NO, TEG NO! ELBBOG DOOF!”     And if you read it backwards, then you’ll know what it means.  I think that it’s clever that Roald Dahl put all these words backwards and made it sound like a spell. I recommend this book very much to readers 2nd to 5th grade.  I recommend this book to people who want to read a little bit about tortoise history but at the same time read a funny  book.

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