The BFG

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The BFG (short for "Big Friendly Giant") is a 1982 children's book written by British novelist Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake. It is an expansion of a short story from Dahl's 1975 book Danny, the Champion of the World. The book is dedicated to Dahl's late daughter, Olivia, who died of measles encephalitis at the age of seven in 1962. As of 2009, the novel has sold 37 million copies in UK editions alone.

An animated television adaptation was released in 1989 with David Jason providing the voice of the BFG and Amanda Root as the voice of Sophie. It has also been adapted as a theatre performance. A theatrical live-action adaptation directed by Steven Spielberg was released in 2016. PLOT: The story is about a young orphaned girl named Sophie, living in a girl's orphanage run by the cantankerous and abusive Mrs. Clonkers.

One night, Sophie sees a large, cloaked person blowing something via a trumpet-like object into a bedroom window down the street. She is discovered by the mysterious person, who carries her to his homeland of Giant Country. There, he identifies himself as the Big Friendly Giant ('BFG'), who nightly blows bottled dreams into the bedrooms of children, and explains the other type of giants that eat humans, mostly children. Because the BFG refuses to eat people or steal food from humans, he subsists on a foul-tasting vegetable known as a snozzcumber.

It's like a cucumber with black strips. Sophie and the BFG quickly become friends; but Sophie is soon put in danger by the sudden arrival of the Bloodbottler Giant, who suspects the BFG of harboring Sophie. Sophie hides in the snozzcumber, unknown to the BFG, and the BFG offers the snozzcumber to the Bloodbottler, hoping that its foul taste will repel him from the area; whereupon the Bloodbottler spits out the snozzcumber and Sophie, and leaves in disgust. When Sophie announces she is thirsty, the BFG treats her to a fizzy drink called frobscottle, which causes noisy flatulence because of the bubbles sinking downwards.

The BFG calls this "Whizpopping". The next morning, the BFG takes Sophie to Dream Country to catch more dreams, but is tormented by the other giants along the way; notably by their leader, the Fleshlumpeater, the largest and most fearsome. In Dream Country, the BFG demonstrates his dream-catching skills to Sophie; but the BFG mistakenly captures a nightmare, and uses it to start a fight among the other giants when Fleshlumpeater has a nightmare about Jack. Sophie later persuades him to approach the Queen of England toward imprisoning the other giants.

To this end, she uses her knowledge of London to navigate the BFG to Buckingham Palace, and the BFG creates a nightmare, introducing knowledge of the man-eating giants to the Queen, and leaves Sophie in the Queen's bedroom to confirm it. Because the dream included the knowledge of Sophie's presence, the Queen believes her and speaks with the BFG. After considerable effort by the palace staff to create a table, chair, and cutlery of appropriate size, the BFG is given a delicious breakfast, and the Queen telephones the King of Sweden and the Sultan of Baghdad to confirm the BFG's story – the giants having visited those locations on the previous two nights – then summons the Head of the British Army and the Marshal of the Royal Air Force.

The said officers, though initially belligerent and skeptical, eventually agree to cooperate. A fleet of helicopters then follows Sophie and the BFG to the giants' homeland, where the giants are tied up as they sleep. The only one not easily caught is the Fleshlumpeater who wakes up as the British attempt to tie him up, but Sophie and the BFG trick him into allowing his own capture by claiming that he has been poisoned by a venomous snake so that he will put his hands and feet together to be tied up. The man-eating giants are suspended under the helicopters and carried back to London where they are then imprisoned in a deep pit where they are only fed snozzcumbers.

Afterwards, a huge castle is built as the BFG's new house, with a little cottage next door for Sophie. While they are living happily in England, with several gifts coming in for many years from the governments of every country ever targeted by the giants (notably England, Sweden, Iraq, Arabia, India, Panama, Tibet, the United States, Chile, Jersey and New Zealand), the BFG writes a book of their adventures, which is then identified as the novel itself.