Mary, Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
“I live with my brat in a high-rise flat,
So how in the world would I know?”
This is a definitive example of what is basically going on within this collection of verse by Dahl. For the most part, these poems reinterpret familiar tales by putting a modern-day spin upon them. A handful of poems are original inventions by the author, but with titles featuring names like Aladdin, Hansel, and Ali Baba well as titles like “The Tortoise and the Hare” and “The Emperor’s New Clothes” it becomes eminently clear where those original concepts are likely headed.
She held me here, she held me there,
By gum, she held me everywhere.
She kindly taught me, after that,
To wrestle with her on the mat.
Oh! Gosh, the things she taught to me,
Our gym-instructress, Miss McPhee!
The original over of his book of verse featured an illustration done in cartoon style. Featured prominently, but not in a way that specifically draws attention to it, is a cartoon sign on which is printed, as though handwritten, “Warning Unsuitable for Small Readers.” It is not a visual joke. It is, in fact, a genuine disclaim and warning to parents to beware of confusing this book with other Roald Dahl books featuring similar cover art. The poem “Physical Training” is an example of the original content not based on existing fairy or folk tales and it does not even attempt to disguise its meaning as double-entendre or subtext. The accompanying illustration underscores the fact that this is a quite clearly and explicitly a poem about a physically powerful female teacher seducing a willing student.
A woman who my mother knows
Came in and took off all her clothes.
Said I, not being very old,
“By golly gosh, you must be cold.”
“No, no!” she cried. “Indeed, I’m not!
I’m feeling devilishly hot!”
In reality, of course, the warning that some of the verse here is unsuitable for small readers means exactly that. While some off-color stuff goes on, there is nothing that could be considered downright obscene or even offensive. Except, of course, that there are some who by their vary nature will consider a humorous poem about a boy who looks to be of elementary-school age coming face to face with a woman taking her clothes off offensive and even possibly obscene. This poem (and the one about the gym teacher) actually take on a strange aspect here in the 21st century.
The book was first published in 1989 to very little resistance from the organized paragons of censorship or the mass public. Ironically, several decades later in a world with 24/7 access to pornography for anyone with a computer, these two examples in particular might actually face a little more antipathy resulting from the increased awareness of the prevalence of child pornography and seduction of young male students by female teachers. Weirdly, the world has grown both more permissive and more intolerant toward the subject of some of the off-color material contained in these poems.
