It is 30 years exactly since Matilda, Roald Dahl’s novel about a brave little girl who loves books and hates bullies, was first published. To celebrate this anniversary, eight new illustrations of Matilda by Dahl’s longtime illustrator Quentin Blake are revealed for the first time.
Blake was only asked by Matilda’s current publishers, Puffin, to create one sketch, showing what she would be up to as a 30-year-old. Instead, the 85-year-old decided to create eight, three of which appear on the covers of the 30th anniversary editions. “I have had a lot of fun imagining what that little girl might be doing now she’s all grown up,” Blake writes in a new foreword. “Since, as a small child, Matilda was gifted in several different ways, it wasn’t very difficult.”
To celebrate her birthday, we asked six children’s authors to imagine what Matilda would be doing at 30 – and asked how her childhood would have influenced her character and behaviour as an adult.
Michael Rosen: ‘She’d be a standup comedian – and do an incredible impression of Miss Trunchbull’
I think Matilda at 30 would be a very successful standup comedian. Comedians are quite vulnerable people, in my experience, and I think Matilda would have been scarred by her parents. Though she had saved herself, it would have made her very raw. If you got too close, she might tongue-lash you a little bit.
Comedy would help relieve her of the hurt her parents inflicted on her, a way to kind of love them. She knows Virginia Woolf off by heart and draws on this whole hinterland of literature during her act. She shows her own fallibilities and hopes on stage, which is something I think good comedians are really good at doing.
She would do an incredible impression of Miss Trunchbull but also of Miss Honey, whom she’d present as too good to be good: “What’s the point of that?” she’d ask the audience. She go off into a whole riff about her telekinesis: “Oh by the way, when I was a kid I could make a water jug move.” She would talk about it in a way that would leave you not knowing what was real and finish with: “And then a teacher threw one of the kids out of the window.” And you would half-believe her.
Tragically, Miss Honey is dead. She fell off the side of a boat in a fjord in Norway while looking for Roald Dahl, when Matilda was in her 20s. So now there is an inner sadness in Matilda, which she hides. Doing comedy helps her keep her feelings of sadness at bay.
Michael Rosen’s latest book Reading and Rebellion: An Anthology of Radical Writing for Children 1900-1960 is out now.
Francesca Simon: ‘She would not be an explorer or a scientist. She’d have a job around books’
When I think of Matilda, I think of books. Books are the main part of her life and make her life worthwhile. And although she’s brave and comfortable in her own skin, she’s introverted. She’s a person who likes to sit in an armchair and read.
So there’s no doubt in my mind that, at 30, she would not be an explorer or a scientist. She’d have a job around books – maybe running a bookshop, working as a children’s librarian or, at a stretch, being an education minister.
As an adult, she would have a great capacity for happiness because she has survived situations that would crush most children. She’s still an extraordinarily fast reader and by now, she will have read everything. Sharing books is what gives her joy.
She continues to be strong-minded but she’s probably quite shy, one of those quiet people who is a really good listener. I can also see her being a passionate advocate for libraries and spearheading a campaign to ensure that every school has a library. She would force herself to come out of her quietness to do that.
The opera based on Francesca Simon’s book The Monstrous Child opens at the Royal Opera House in February 2019.
Ed Vere: ‘She would have been prime minister for a couple of years at least by now’
Matilda was precocious so I think at the young age of 30, she would have been prime minister for a couple of years by now. She had a great sense of right and wrong so on her way into power, I think she would have enlisted the help of the army to dangle Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, George Osborne and David Cameron from helicopters and take them over the sea to an island. There, she would have had them dropped into a very, very deep pit.
At the bottom of that pit, I feel sure that there would have been an enormous crocodile who hadn’t eaten for a very long time. Hence there would never have been any mention of Brexit or referendums.
With Matilda at the helm, we would now be living in a peaceable country where all are at ease with each other. School libraries would have been a huge priority for her and libraries across the country would be blooming and full of people. Education would be at the heart of everything, and art and music would flourish again in schools. Matilda would know that it’s important to educate whole human beings, not cogs to fit into economies.
Ed Vere’s new book, Goodnight, Max the Brave, will be published on 4 October.
Matt Haig: ‘She would be writing her own version of Game of Thrones’
Matilda’s very self-reliant, so I think at 30 she would be doing precisely what she wanted to do. She wouldn’t rule the world, because she wouldn’t want to.
I think she would be a writer, writing something vast and epic but not realistic, because she’s got such a good imagination. Maybe she would be writing her own version of Game of Thrones, or a harrowing memoir of her childhood. She’s got a lot of demons. But books would be her therapy so she wouldn’t have to be on medication or have counselling. Books will continue to be her salvation.
I don’t know if she would be happy. I saw Matilda as a child as a very yearning kind of person. I feel like, as an adult, she would know happiness, but she wouldn’t be totally satisfied. She would still be on a quest for stories.
Matt Haig’s new children’s book, The Truth Pixie, will be published on 18 October.
Jeff Kinney: ‘She’d work in a bookstore – but she would not be the owner’
I think she would be working in a bookstore with a robust children’s section. She would not be the owner. In the book, she’s distrustful of adults. I see management as a grey figure behind her, while Matilda is the one actually putting the book in the child’s hand. I think Matilda would know that that’s a sacred act. That’s what would drive her.
She’s very curious and adventurous so, in her 20s, I think she would have bounced around the world, having a taste of everything. She’s spent time on an oil rig in Norway and tracked great white sharks in South Africa. But she’s come back home to live with Miss Honey again, because she wants to always be close to her.
In her spare time, she writes fantasy books for young adults aged 12 to 15. Not because she wants to become a published writer, but to nurture a child who reminds her of herself – maybe an underprivileged kid she met in the bookstore one day. She would write just for that kid, to open up new worlds for them. She would write stories for dreamers.
Jeff Kinney’s new book Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Meltdown will be published on 30 October.
Kate Pankhurst: ‘Matilda would co-found a school for children with special powers’
Along with Miss Honey, 30-year-old Matilda would co-found a school for children with special powers such as telekinesis, whose potential is not being tapped. It would appear to be a normal school, but Matilda would have a secret mission to find children with unusual talents, seeking out stories in newspapers and on TV. It would be a very stimulating, creative school where the children would get to make the most of their talents and do what they most enjoy.
Miss Honey would be the headmistress and Matilda would be the school librarian. Perhaps she would appear a bit reserved when you first meet her, but that would change once you got to know her and realise how warm and caring she is. Even at 30, she would still have a love of playing tricks, so the kids would know if anyone messed with her she would think up a cunning and unusual way of getting back at them. But it definitely would not be the Chokey.
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