CHAPTER SIX – The Platinum Blond Man.

31.

17

Mrs Wormwood was exceedingly proud of her ‘platinum blond’ hair and, in between visits to the hairdressers, would use hair dye to keep it looking as good as possible. How many times a year would Mrs Wormwood visit the hairdressers to get her hair completely dyed?

Mrs Wormwood would visit the hairdressers twice a year to get the ‘big dyeing job’ done.

32.

17

According to Matilda’s father, what does “Good strong hair” mean that there is underneath?

Matilda’s father was very fond of saying that “Good strong hair…means there’s a good strong brain underneath.”

33.

17

Matilda plans to get her own back on her father by replacing his purple coloured ‘oil of violet hair tonic’ with her mother’s platinum hair dye. She carefully pours three quarters of the hair tonic down the sink before replacing it with hair dye. Why does she not pour all of it down the sink?

Matilda doesn’t want her father to suspect anything unusual and therefore she leaves just enough hair tonics in the bottle so that, when shaken, the new mixture of hair tonic and hair dye will still look purple.

34.

18

Mr Wormwood liked to have the same large breakfast every morning. What does he always eat?

Mr Wormwood always had two fried eggs on fried bread with three pork sausages and three strips of bacon and some fried tomatoes for breakfast.

35.

18

What makes Mrs Wormwood scream out in surprise and drop her husband’s breakfast on the floor when he arrives for breakfast that morning?

Mrs Wormwood is taken by surprise by her husband’s hair which has gone a ‘dirty silver’ colour as a result of Matilda’s handiwork.

36.

19

When Mr Wormwood sees his hair, he announces that he can’t go to work looking so ridiculous before asking ‘how could this have happened’. What does Matilda say must have happened?

Matilda tells her father that he must have accidentally used his wife’s hair dye instead of his hair tonic.

37.

19

Mrs Wormwood tells her husband that her hair dye is very powerful stuff and contains peroxide. Mr Wormwood will be lucky, his wife tells him, if his hair doesn’t all fall out. What else is peroxide used for, according to Mrs Wormwood?

According to Mrs Wormwood, peroxide is sold under another name to clean and disinfect toilets.

38.

20

Matilda tells her mother that her father ‘does do some pretty silly things now and again’. What does her mother tell Matilda she will learn about men when she gets a bit older?

Mrs Wormwood tells Matilda that ‘men are not always quite as clever as they think they are. You will learn that when you get a bit older, my girl.’ 

CHAPTER FIVE – ARITHMETIC.

27.

14.

Dahl tells his readers that Matilda was only very small and very young and so always had to do as she was told. However, in spite of this, she did have power over her family. What was this?

Dahl tells his readers that ‘the only power Matilda had over anyone in her family was Brain power’.

28.

15.

One evening Mr Wormwood returned home to his family in an excellent mood boasting that he had sold no fewer than five cars that day, ‘each at a tidy profit’. He tells his family that he had employed a number of tricks to sell the vehicles. In addition to the two ‘tricks of the trade’ which he had already told his son, namely putting sawdust in the oil and using a drill to change the milometer, what third trick does he mention?

The third trick mentioned by Mr Wormwood was to put a ‘splash of paint here and there’ to make the car look newer and better than it was.

29.

15-16

Mr Wormwood is very pleased because he sold so many cars, and asks his son to calculate how much profit he had made. For each car, he reads out the amount of money he had bought it for, and the amount he had sold it for. When Matilda beats her brother to the correct answer, Mr Wormwood becomes very angry. What answer does Matilda give?

Matilda correctly calculates that her father’s total profit was £4303.50 on the five cars.

30.

16

When Matilda successfully beats her brother to the correct answer, her father becomes very angry. What does he accuse Matilda of doing?

Mr Wormwood accuses Matilda of cheating by looking at the answer that he had written on a piece of paper earlier in the day. Matilda points out that she is sitting on the other side of the room and so couldn’t possibly have seen the answer but her father reiterates that Matilda is ‘a cheat and a liar’.

CHAPTER FOUR – The Ghost.

21.

11

Sometime after the ‘superglue incident’, Mr Wormwood arrived home from work in a bad mood. He turned on the television and then seemed to become angry at Matilda who was reading. What did he do to her copy of The Red Pony?

After complaining that she was reading too much, and that all American authors write ‘filth’, he started to tear the pages out of the book and throw them into the wastepaper basket.

22.

12

When Matilda tells her father that he is ruining a library book, how does he respond?

Mr Wormwood doesn’t stop destroying the book and simply tells Matilda that she will have to save up her pocket money if she wanted to replace the library book.

23.

12

Who were Fred and Chopper?

Fred was a six year old boy who lived just around the corner from Matilda. For some time now he had been boasting about Chopper, a blue and yellow talking parrot that his father had given him.

24.

12

Matilda wants to borrow Chopper for a single night, but Fred is reluctant to let her have him. How does She persuade Fred to give Chopper to her?

She promises to give him her pocket-money for the next week.

25.

13

When Matilda’s family start to hear Chopper speaking to them, they think that they are being burgled. Where has Matilda hidden Chopper to create this effect?

Matilda has hidden Chopper in the chimney.

26.

13

Going to the dining room to investigate the noises, the Wormwoods each arm themselves with something. What does each one choose?

Each of the Wormwoods chose a different weapon. Mrs Wormwood grabbed a poker from the fireplace whilst Mr Wormwood grasped a golf club. Matilda’s brother held a table-lamp and Matilda clung on to the knife she had been using to eat with.

27.

14

When the Wormwoods burst into the dining room they are surprised to find that no one is waiting for them in there. When they hear Chopper start to say ‘Rattle my bones’, Matilda makes a suggestion as to what could be making the noise. What was this suggestion?

Matilda tells the rest of her family that it must be a ghost who is making the noises. She also tells them that she knows the room to be haunted as she has heard the voices of ghosts in there before.

CHAPTER THREE – The Hat And The Superglue.

17.

9

When Mr Wormwood arrived at the second-hand car garage to start work the next morning, he had a great surprise. What was this and how did he react?

Mr Wormwood discovered that his hat was stuck to his head. Earlier that morning Matilda had secretly spread superglue around the inside of the hat before her father put it on as he went to work. Mr Wormwood couldn’t take the hat off and so had to keep it on all day hoping that his staff thought that he had meant to do this ‘like gangsters do in the films’.

18.

10

When Mr Wormwood arrived home that evening, he was in a very bad mood. Matilda told him a story about ‘a boy down the road’ who had also had an accident with superglue. What had he done?

The boy had got some Superglue on his finger without realising it and then tried to pick his nose. The finger became stuck up his nostril for a week.

19.

10

Later that evening, Mr wormwood discovered the worst thing about not being able to take off his hat. What was this?

Mr Wormwood discovered the worst thing about not being able to take off his hat when he went to bed. It was impossible to fall asleep as he couldn’t get comfortable on the pillow.

20.

10

What does Mr Wormwood decide to do about the hat when it is still stuck to his head the following morning, and is this successful?

Mr Wormwood decides that the hat will have to be cut off. Mrs Wormwood tried her best to cut the hat off cleanly but this doesn’t prove very successful as it is necessary for her to cut off a lot of his hair in the process, leaving a bald band around his head. In addition to this, a number of ‘small patches of brown leathery stuff’ are left stuck to his forehead.