First Student Drawing

P4/Red student Bam Bam gave me a picture today that she drew of Charlie and Willy Wonka.  She’s very excited that we’ll be reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory next term (which will start at the end of October).

Charlie’s Chocolatey Covers

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was published in America the year before I was born – way back in 1964.  That’s almost forty-six years ago!  The drawings in that very first edition were by a man named Joseph Schindelman.  The two original covers (one hardcover, the other for the paperback) looked like this:

The book was made into a movie in 1971.  It was called Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and starred Gene Wilder.  I first saw this movie when I was a young boy living in Texas; the thing that I remember most are the Oompa Loompas with the orange skin and green hair.  I still like the first version of the movie better than the one made five years ago with Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka.  The poster for the original movie looked like this:

The very next year (1972), Roald Dahl published a new book that continued the story of Charlie Bucket.  It was called Charlie and the Glass Elevator.  He also started to write a third “Charlie” book (Charlie in the White House) but quit after writing only one chapter.

In 1973, Roald Dahl re-wrote parts of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  In the original book, the Oompa Loompa were described as African pygmies (small, weak people) who are paid in cacao beans, sing war-like songs, and let themselves be experimented on like laboratory animals.  Many people didn’t like this; they thought it was racist.  The movie had already made some changes so Roald Dahl changed the book, too.  For one thing, the place the Oompa Loompas came from was changed from Africa to the imaginary Loompaland.  Even the money was changed (from pre-decimal to decimal currency).  Joseph Schindelman made new drawings for the new edition.  This was the cover:

The first edition illustrated by a different artist – Michael Foreman – was published in paperback in 1985.  Here are a few of the covers published in the next few years before Quentin Blake began drawing the pictures:

The best-known illustrations for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, indeed for all of Roald Dahl’s books (and for many other authors as well!) have been drawn by Quentin Blake since 1998.  I’ve collected a bunch of his Chocolate Factory covers:

The Complete Adventures of Charlie and Mr. Willy Wonka – published in 2001 – contains both Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Glass Elevator:

A couple of new covers for the 40th anniversary of the original book in 2004:

Some really cool special editions (my favorite is the slipcase boxed edition):

Here are a couple of different covers from Norway (the country where Roald Dahl was born):

The cover on the left is from France, the one on the right is in Spanish:

And the covers from Russia and Thailand are a lot different:

When Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was originally written, it included an extra chapter.  It was removed during the editing of the book and featured a character called Miranda Piker and a candy called Spotty Powder.  This “lost chapter” wasn’t published until 23 July 2005 in The Times of London.  It was later included in a book called Spotty Powder and Other Splendiferous Secrets:

Also in 2005, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was made into a movie for a second time.  Roald Dahl had hated the 1971 original and refused to let Charlie and the Glass Elevator be filmed.  He died in 1990 and the following year Warner Bros. began talking with his family about a new movie.  They finally gave their permission in 1998 with his widow, Liccy, and his daughter, Lucy, being given total artistic control.  They were even given final say on the choices of actors, directors, and writers.  Martin Scorsese was involved for a short while and possible actors talked about to play Willy Wonka included Nicholas Cage, Michael Keaton, Brad Pitt, Will Smith, Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey. In the end, Tim Burton was hired to direct the movie and he brought along his friends Johnny Depp to star and Danny Elfman to write the music.  New editions of the book were published to help promote the movie:

 

Finally, here is the cover of the new Willy Wonka’s Whipplecrumptious Annual for 2011 which was published today:

How many different covers for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory can you find?  Teacher Mark would love to see more!