Roald Dahl’s 1998 children’s fantasy Matilda tells the darkly humorous story of a brilliant and kindly little girl who reads grown-up books, plays pranks on her emotionally abusive parents, and uses her telekinetic ability in her battles with a tyrannical school principal.

Dahl is widely considered one the greatest children’s storytellers. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide; they include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, The BFG, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Many of Dahl’s tales, including Matilda, have been made into feature films. The 2007 Penguin edition includes illustrations by Quentin Blake; its ebook version forms the basis for this study guide.

Plot Summary

Often left alone at home by her neglectful, self-involved parents, Matilda Wormwood teaches herself to read at age three; by age five, she’s read all the children’s books at the local library and more than a dozen adult classics like Great Expectations and The Grapes of Wrath. Matilda also has a knack for math and can do arithmetic in her head.

Her parents have no interest in books and think Matilda’s wasting her time. Her father, Harry Wormwood, dresses garishly and sells run-down used cars faked-up as nearly new; he proudly teaches his young son, Michael, the fine points of cheating customers. Matilda’s mother spends afternoons playing Bingo and evenings watching TV. Both parents are self-important and small-minded; they regard their daughter as an annoyance, and they treat her rudely.

Matilda decides to get even with them. She puts superglue into her father’s porkpie hat, and it takes him a day to get it removed, along with a lot of his hair. She borrows a neighbor’s parrot and positions the caged bird in the chimney; when the parrot speaks during dinner, it terrifies her parents, who believe it’s a burglar or a ghost. She switches her mother’s platinum hair dye with her father’s hair lotion, causing him to convert his hair from black to ashy white.

Matilda enters Crunchem Hall Primary School, where her teacher is the kind and lovely Miss Honey, who quickly recognizes Matilda’s genius and gives her advanced schoolwork. She tries to convince Matilda’s parents to take seriously their child’s brilliance, but the Wormwoods dismiss the idea.

The headmistress, Miss Trunchbull is powerfully built and mean to the children, whom she despises. A former Olympic hammer thrower, Trunchbull has a knack for lifting up children who annoy her and throwing them through windows or over fences. One boy is caught stealing her lunchtime dessert; she calls an assembly, where she forces the boy to eat an entire giant chocolate cake. The boy succeeds, which frustrates Trunchbull.

The tyrannical woman hates Matilda on sight. When the girl’s pal, Lavender, sneaks a newt into Trunchbull’s water glass, the startled headmistress accuses Matilda of the deed. Furious, Matilda’s eyes somehow send energy toward the glass and tip it over, newt and all, onto Trunchbull.

Matilda confesses to Miss Honey that she made the glass fall; to prove it, she concentrates and makes the glass tip over again. Amazed, Miss Honey agrees to work secretly with Matilda to understand her new power.

They walk to the teacher’s tiny countryside cottage, which has no running water and no furniture. Miss Honey explains that when she was a little girl named Jenny, her mother died young, and her father, Magnus, brought in Jenny’s aunt Agatha to help raise the child at Jenny and Magnus’s beautiful house. The aunt, though, was cruel; she murdered Jenny’s father and framed it as suicide, then enslaved the girl for housework. Jenny later attended a nearby teacher’s college, and she got hired at Crunchem Hall, but the aunt still forced her to sign over her salary. Miss Honey escaped by moving to the cottage, which the owner rents to her for pennies a week. Her aunt Agatha is Headmistress Trunchbull, who still lives in Jenny’s old house as though it is rightfully hers; she forged the deed.

Matilda decides to help Miss Honey. Each day after school for a week, she practices making one of her father’s cigars levitate and move about. At school, when Trunchbull teaches Miss Honey’s Thursday class, Matilda telekinetically makes a piece of chalk write on the board, saying that it’s Magnus, who has come back to warn Agatha to give Jenny her house and salary and leave town—or he’ll get her like she got him. Trunchbull faints and must be carried to the sick-room.

The next day, Trunchbull’s assistant, Mr. Trilby, goes to Trunchbull’s house to find it unlocked. He enters to see that everything is in place except that it is vacant. Miss Honey then gets a letter from a law firm that says her father’s will has suddenly appeared. It gives the estate to her, including the family house where Trunchbull lived.

Miss Honey moves into her old house. Matilda visits her every afternoon. Miss Honey gets the girl transferred to the top grade, where she’s an excellent student.

Matilda’s father gets into trouble with the law for his crooked business operations, and the Wormwoods pack hurriedly to escape to Spain. Matilda doesn’t want to go; she hurries with Miss Honey to her house, where the teacher offers to care for the girl while the rest of the Wormwoods escape. Harry and his wife shrug and accept the deal. They pile into a car with their son and drive away. Matilda jumps into Miss Honey’s arms, and they hug.