Boy – Tales of Childhood is the first autobiographical book by Roald Dahl. It covers Dahl's life from his first memories onward to leaving school, including accounts of his relationship with his mother and his treatment at English public schools. Like most of Dahl's work, Boy is aimed at children but does not flinch from describing the corporal punishment and other brutalities that were common in public schools of the time. it begins with a short history of his family and ends with his first job (he does not go to the university but starts wokring right after high school)!

Extended: This book is an autobiography written by the well-known author, Roald Dahl (1916-1990). Roald Dahl is very popular for his tremendous and fantastic books, especionally his children books have become great hits because of their immersive storylines and lifelike descriptions. He has written, among others, these illustrious books: “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “Mathilda” and “The Giant”. Roald Dahl’s parents were Norwegian, and Roald knew the language perfectly while he was young. However, when he got older, he refused to speak nothing but Great-Britain-English. Roald’s father, Harald Dahl, wanted his children to get a good private school education in England, therefore he and his wife moved to Llandaff near Cardiff in Wales. This place is also the place where Roald got his first glimpse of daylight in 1916. Roald Dahl described his life experiences in two books, “Boy” and “Going Solo”. The former is about his childhood and his school years, and the second is about Roald’s life after school. “Boy” is not a real autobiography, at least not in Dahl’s eyes. Roald associates autobiographies with books stuffed full of plain and hard details about the authors life. In his eyes, “Boy” is a book of vivid memories and funny happenings from his life. One of the key aspects of the book is the criticising of the strict and brutal scholar system in Great Britain at the time of the happening stories. In the book, Dahl describes the horrid teachers and the even more fearsome Headmasters. Small mistakes or faults like to forget a pair of socks at the floor just before bedtime, burning your toast at tea or even as small things as asking a teacher if you could go to the toilet at the “wrong time”, would maybe result in caning and penal servitude by the “higher-placed” persons in Roald’s society. Even though Roald’s father died when Roald was three years old, Roald’s mother, Sofie Magdalena Dahl, travelled on annual summer vacations to Norway together with all her children. Roald’s grandparents lived by the coast in Norway, and by tradition the entire family took a small boat out to a little vacant island at shore. Here they lived a pretty primitive life with traditional Norwegian food and adventurous experiences around the sunbathed, idyllic island. Through the book, we follow great, and some smaller, events of Roald’s childhood. From the mouse plot when he went to Llandaff Cathedral School, to the removal of young Roald’s adenoids without any form for pain-relievers. Many of Dahl’s descriptions are kind of grotesque and lifelike, therefore you sometimes feel some distaste when you read parts of his lines. However, these descriptions are very important to illustrate what the situation was like in the twenties. The book ends when Roald is sent into the World War II as a pilot. How his life story goes on can be read in the book “Going Solo”.

This book's theme is about the school systems of the early twentieth century, and what the punishment and stringency of the English schools did to the pupils. I also think the theme is about how a young boy thinks and feels about different ways of behaviours and situations.

Dahl's autobiography continues in Going Solo .