Yet he is also capable of great kindness and empathy, intuiting that Stone, like him, knows the bittersweet pain of caring for a brain-damaged child. He’s a kid himself (“yum yum”) when ice cream arrives, and perhaps this retained boyishness is what allows him to pick “a glorious, playful path through the chaos of childhood”, as Maschler puts it, for his adoring young readers. Dahl insists his address should stay in the phone book so children can write to him, even though he’s received death threats after the contentious review.