Charlie_and_the_Chocolate_Factory.pdf

For Theo

Some reviews of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
‘One of the most popular children’s books of all times’
– Sunday Times
‘Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake have made an important and lasting
contribution to children’s literature’ – Guardian
‘A book that requires no introduction as it is probably Dahl’s best-known
and most-read creation and deservedly so… Brilliant’
– Lovereading4Kids
Winner of the Millennium Children’s Book Award (UK, 2000) and
nominated as one of the nation’s favourite books in the BBC’s Big Read
campaign, 2003

Books by Roald Dahl

The BFG
Boy: Tales of Childhood Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Charlie and
the Great Glass Elevator Danny the Champion of the World George’s
Marvellous Medicine Going Solo
James and the Giant Peach The Witches

Matilda
For younger readers

The Enormous Crocodile Esio Trot

Fantastic Mr Fox
The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me The Magic Finger

The Twits
Picture books
Dirty Beasts (with Quentin Blake) The Enormous Crocodile (with Quentin
Blake) The Minpins (with Patrick Benson) Revolting Rhymes (with Quentin
Blake) Teenage fiction
The Great Automatic Grammatizator and Other Stories Rhyme Stew
Skin and Other Stories The Vicar of Nibbleswicke The Wonderful Story
of Henry Sugar and Six More

PUFFIN MODERN CLASSICS

Roald Dahl was born in 1916 in Wales of Norwegian parents. He was
educated in England and went on to work for the Shell Oil Company in
Africa. He began writing after a ‘monumental bash on the head’
sustained as an RAF fighter pilot during the Second World War. Roald
Dahl is one of the most successful and well known of all children’s
writers. His books, which are read by children the world over, include
The BFG and The Witches, winner of the 1983 Whitbread Award. Roald
Dahl died in 1990 at the age of seventy-four.
Quentin Blake is one of Britain’s most successful illustrators. His first
drawings were published in Punch magazine when he was sixteen and
still at school. Quentin Blake has illustrated over three hundred books
and he was Roald Dahl’s favourite illustrator. He has won many awards
and prizes, including the Whitbread Award and the Kate Greenaway
Medal. In 1999 he was chosen to be the first ever Children’s Laureate
and in 2005 he was awarded a CBE for services to children’s literature.

ROALD DAHL

Illustrated by
Quentin Blake

PUFFIN

PUFFIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson
Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East,

Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin
Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin

Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of
Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre,

Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale,

North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South

Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books
Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England puffinbooks.com
First published in the USA 1964

Published in Great Britain by George Allen & Unwin 1967
Published in Puffin Books 1973

Reissued with new illustrations 1995

Published in Puffin Modern Classics 1997, 2004
This edition reissued 2010

Text copyright © Roald Dahl Nominee Ltd, 1964
Illustrations copyright © Quentin Blake, 1995

Introduction copyright © Julia Eccleshare, 2004

All rights reserved
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted Except in the United States of

America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,
be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any

form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser A CIP catalogue record for
this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-141-96061-6

Contents
1 Here Comes Charlie
2 Mr Willy Wonka’s Factory
3 Mr Wonka and the Indian Prince
4 The Secret Workers
5 The Golden Tickets
6 The First Two Finders
7 Charlie’s Birthday
8 Two More Golden Tickets Found
9 Grandpa Joe Takes a Gamble
10 The Family Begins to Starve
11 The Miracle
12 What It Said on the Golden Ticket
13 The Big Day Arrives
14 Mr Willy Wonka
15 The Chocolate Room
16 The Oompa-Loompas
17 Augustus Gloop Goes up the Pipe
18 Down the Chocolate River
19 The Inventing Room – Everlasting Gobstoppers and Hair Toffee
20 The Great Gum Machine
21 Good-bye Violet
22 Along the Corridor
23 Square Sweets That Look Round
24 Veruca in the Nut Room
25 The Great Glass Lift
26 The Television-Chocolate Room
27 Mike Teavee is Sent by Television
28 Only Charlie Left

29 The Other Children Go Home
30 Charlie’s Chocolate Factory

There are five children in this book:
AUGUSTUS GLOOP
A greedy boy
VERUCA SALT
A girl who is spoiled by her parents
VIOLET BEAUREGARDE
A girl who chews gum all day long
MIKE TEAVEE
A boy who does nothing but watch television and
CHARLIE BUCKET
The hero

1 Here Comes Charlie

These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr Bucket.

Their names are Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine.

And these two very old people are the father and mother of Mrs
Bucket. Their names are Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina.

This is Mr Bucket. This is Mrs Bucket.
Mr and Mrs Bucket have a small boy whose name is Charlie Bucket.

This is Charlie.
How d’you do? And how d’you do? And how d’you do again? He is
pleased to meet you.
The whole of this family – the six grown-ups (count them) and little
Charlie Bucket – live together in a small wooden house on the edge of a
great town.

The house wasn’t nearly large enough for so many people, and life
was extremely uncomfortable for them all. There were only two rooms
in the place altogether, and there was only one bed. The bed was given
to the four old grandparents because they were so old and tired. They
were so tired, they never got out of it.
Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine on this side, Grandpa George
and Grandma Georgina on this side.
Mr and Mrs Bucket and little Charlie Bucket slept in the other room,
upon mattresses on the floor.
In the summertime, this wasn’t too bad, but in the winter, freezing
cold draughts blew across the floor all night long, and it was awful.
There wasn’t any question of them being able to buy a better house –
or even one more bed to sleep in. They were far too poor for that.
Mr Bucket was the only person in the family with a job. He worked in
a toothpaste factory, where he sat all day long at a bench and screwed
the little caps on to the tops of the tubes of toothpaste after the tubes
had been filled. But a toothpaste cap-screwer is never paid very much
money, and poor Mr Bucket, however hard he worked, and however fast
he screwed on the caps, was never able to make enough to buy one half
of the things that so large a family needed. There wasn’t even enough
money to buy proper food for them all. The only meals they could afford
were bread and margarine for breakfast, boiled potatoes and cabbage for
lunch, and cabbage soup for supper. Sundays were a bit better. They all
looked forward to Sundays because then, although they had exactly the
same, everyone was allowed a second helping.
The Buckets, of course, didn’t starve, but every one of them – the two
old grandfathers, the two old grandmothers, Charlie’s father, Charlie’s
mother, and especially little Charlie himself – went about from morning
till night with a horrible empty feeling in their tummies.
Charlie felt it worst of all. And although his father and mother often
went without their own share of lunch or supper so that they could give
it to him, it still wasn’t nearly enough for a growing boy. He desperately
wanted something more filling and satisfying than cabbage and cabbage
soup. The one thing he longed for more than anything else was…
CHOCOLATE.

Walking to school in the mornings, Charlie could see great slabs of
chocolate piled up high in the shop windows, and he would stop and
stare and press his nose against the glass, his mouth watering like mad.
Many times a day, he would see other children taking bars of creamy
chocolate out of their pockets and munching them greedily, and that, of
course, was pure torture.
Only once a year, on his birthday, did Charlie Bucket ever get to taste
a bit of chocolate. The whole family saved up their money for that
special occasion, and when the great day arrived, Charlie was always
presented with one small chocolate bar to eat all by himself. And each
time he received it, on those marvellous birthday mornings, he would
place it carefully in a small wooden box that he owned, and treasure it
as though it were a bar of solid gold; and for the next few days, he
would allow himself only to look at it, but never to touch it. Then at last,
when he could stand it no longer, he would peel back a tiny bit of the
paper wrapping at one corner to expose a tiny bit of chocolate, and then
he would take a tiny nibble – just enough to allow the lovely sweet taste
to spread out slowly over his tongue. The next day, he would take
another tiny nibble, and so on, and so on. And in this way, Charlie
would make his sixpenny bar of birthday chocolate last him for more
than a month.
But I haven’t yet told you about the one awful thing that tortured
little Charlie, the lover of chocolate, more than anything else. This thing,
for him, was far, far worse than seeing slabs of chocolate in the shop
windows or watching other children munching bars of creamy chocolate
right in front of him. It was the most terrible torturing thing you could
imagine, and it was this:
In the town itself, actually within sight of the house in which Charlie
lived, there was an ENORMOUS CHOCOLATE FACTORY!
Just imagine that!
And it wasn’t simply an ordinary enormous chocolate factory, either.
It was the largest and most famous in the whole world! It was WONKA’S
FACTORY, owned by a man called Mr Willy Wonka, the greatest
inventor and maker of chocolates that there has ever been. And what a
tremendous, marvellous place it was! It had huge iron gates leading into
it, and a high wall surrounding it, and smoke belching from its

chimneys, and strange whizzing sounds coming from deep inside it. And
outside the walls, for half a mile around in every direction, the air was
scented with the heavy rich smell of melting chocolate!
Twice a day, on his way to and from school, little Charlie Bucket had
to walk right past the gates of the factory. And every time he went by,
he would begin to walk very, very slowly, and he would hold his nose
high in the air and take long deep sniffs of the gorgeous chocolatey smell
all around him.
Oh, how he loved that smell!
And oh, how he wished he could go inside the factory and see what it
was like!

2
Mr Willy Wonka’s Factory
In the evenings, after he had finished his supper of watery cabbage soup,
Charlie always went into the room of his four grandparents to listen to
their stories, and then afterwards to say good night.
Every one of these old people was over ninety. They were as
shrivelled as prunes, and as bony as skeletons, and throughout the day,
until Charlie made his appearance, they lay huddled in their one bed,
two at either end, with nightcaps on to keep their heads warm, dozing
the time away with nothing to do. But as soon as they heard the door
opening, and heard Charlie’s voice saying, ‘Good evening, Grandpa Joe
and Grandma Josephine, and Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina,’
then all four of them would suddenly sit up, and their old wrinkled faces
would light up with smiles of pleasure – and the talking would begin.
For they loved this little boy. He was the only bright thing in their lives,
and his evening visits were something that they looked forward to all
day long. Often, Charlie’s mother and father would come in as well, and
stand by the door, listening to the stories that the old people told; and
thus, for perhaps half an hour every night, this room would become a
happy place, and the whole family would forget that it was hungry and
poor.
One evening, when Charlie went in to see his grandparents, he said to
them, ‘Is it really true that Wonka’s Chocolate Factory is the biggest in
the world?’
‘True?’ cried all four of them at once. ‘Of course it’s true! Good
heavens, didn’t you know that? It’s about fifty times as big as any other!’
‘And is Mr Willy Wonka really the cleverest chocolate maker in the
world?’
‘My dear boy,’ said Grandpa Joe, raising himself up a little higher on
his pillow, ‘Mr Willy Wonka is the most amazing, the most fantastic, the
most extraordinary chocolate maker the world has ever seen! I thought

everybody knew that!’

‘I knew he was famous, Grandpa Joe, and I knew he was very
clever…’
‘Clever!’ cried the old man. ‘He’s more than that! He’s a magician with
chocolate! He can make anything – anything he wants! Isn’t that a fact,
my dears?’
The other three old people nodded their heads slowly up and down,
and said, ‘Absolutely true. Just as true as can be.’
And Grandpa Joe said, ‘You mean to say I’ve never told you about Mr
Willy Wonka and his factory?’
‘Never,’ answered little Charlie.
‘Good heavens above! I don’t know what’s the matter with me!’
‘Will you tell me now, Grandpa Joe, please?’
‘I certainly will. Sit down beside me on the bed, my dear, and listen
carefully.’

Grandpa Joe was the oldest of the four grandparents. He was ninetysix and a half, and that is just about as old as anybody can be. Like all
extremely old people, he was delicate and weak, and throughout the day
he spoke very little. But in the evenings, when Charlie, his beloved
grandson, was in the room, he seemed in some marvellous way to grow
quite young again. All his tiredness fell away from him, and he became
as eager and excited as a young boy.
‘Oh, what a man he is, this Mr Willy Wonka!’ cried Grandpa Joe. ‘Did
you know, for example, that he has himself invented more than two
hundred new kinds of chocolate bars, each with a different centre, each
far sweeter and creamier and more delicious than anything the other
chocolate factories can make!’
‘Perfectly true!’ cried Grandma Josephine. ‘And he sends them to all
the four corners of the earth! Isn’t that so, Grandpa Joe?’
‘It is, my dear, it is. And to all the kings and presidents of the world as
well. But it isn’t only chocolate bars that he makes. Oh, dear me, no! He
has some really fantastic inventions up his sleeve, Mr Willy Wonka has!
Did you know that he’s invented a way of making chocolate ice cream so
that it stays cold for hours and hours without being in the refrigerator?
You can even leave it lying in the sun all morning on a hot day and it
won’t go runny!’
‘But that’s impossible!’ said little Charlie, staring at his grandfather.
‘Of course it’s impossible!’ cried Grandpa Joe. ‘It’s completely absurd!
But Mr Willy Wonka has done it!’
‘Quite right!’ the others agreed, nodding their heads. ‘Mr Wonka has

done it.’
‘And then again,’ Grandpa Joe went on speaking very slowly now so
that Charlie wouldn’t miss a word, ‘Mr Willy Wonka can make
marshmallows that taste of violets, and rich caramels that change colour
every ten seconds as you suck them, and little feathery sweets that melt
away deliriously the moment you put them between your lips. He can
make chewing-gum that never loses its taste, and sugar balloons that you
can blow up to enormous sizes before you pop them with a pin and
gobble them up. And, by a most secret method, he can make lovely blue
birds’ eggs with black spots on them, and when you put one of these in
your mouth, it gradually gets smaller and smaller until suddenly there is
nothing left except a tiny little pink sugary baby bird sitting on the tip of
your tongue.’
Grandpa Joe paused and ran the point of his tongue slowly over his
lips. ‘It makes my mouth water just thinking about it,’ he said.
‘Mine, too,’ said little Charlie. ‘But please go on.’
While they were talking, Mr and Mrs Bucket, Charlie’s mother and
father, had come quietly into the room, and now both were standing just
inside the door, listening.
‘Tell Charlie about that crazy Indian prince,’ said Grandma Josephine.
‘He’d like to hear that.’
‘You mean Prince Pondicherry?’ said Grandpa Joe, and he began
chuckling with laughter.
‘Completely dotty!’ said Grandpa George.
‘But very rich,’ said Grandma Georgina.
‘What did he do?’ asked Charlie eagerly.
‘Listen,’ said Grandpa Joe, ‘and I’ll tell you.’

3
Mr Wonka and the Indian Prince
‘Prince Pondicherry wrote a letter to Mr Willy Wonka,’ said Grandpa
Joe, ‘and asked him to come all the way out to India and build him a
colossal palace entirely out of chocolate.’
‘Did Mr Wonka do it, Grandpa?’
‘He did, indeed. And what a palace it was! It had one hundred rooms,
and everything was made of either dark or light chocolate! The bricks
were chocolate, and the cement holding them together was chocolate,
and the windows were chocolate, and all the walls and ceilings were
made of chocolate, so were the carpets and the pictures and the furniture
and the beds; and when you turned on the taps in the bathroom, hot
chocolate came pouring out.
‘When it was all finished, Mr Wonka said to Prince Pondicherry, “I
warn you, though, it won’t last very long, so you’d better start eating it
right away.”
‘ “Nonsense!” shouted the Prince. “I’m not going to eat my palace! I’m
not even going to nibble the staircase or lick the walls! I’m going to live
in it!”
‘But Mr Wonka was right, of course, because soon after this, there
came a very hot day with a boiling sun, and the whole palace began to
melt, and then it sank slowly to the ground, and the crazy prince, who
was dozing in the living room at the time, woke up to find himself
swimming around in a huge brown sticky lake of chocolate.’
Little Charlie sat very still on the edge of the bed, staring at his
grandfather. Charlie’s face was bright, and his eyes were stretched so
wide you could see the whites all around. ‘Is all this really true?’ he
asked. ‘Or are you pulling my leg?’
‘It’s true!’ cried all four of the old people at once. ‘Of course it’s true!
Ask anyone you like!’

‘And I’ll tell you something else that’s true,’ said Grandpa Joe, and
now he leaned closer to Charlie, and lowered his voice to a soft, secret
whisper. ‘Nobody… ever… comes… out!’
‘Out of where?’ asked Charlie.
‘And… nobody… ever… goes… in!’
‘In where?’ cried Charlie.
‘Wonka’s factory, of course!’
‘Grandpa, what do you mean?’
‘I mean workers, Charlie.’
‘Workers?’
‘All factories,’ said Grandpa Joe, ‘have workers streaming in and out
of the gates in the mornings and evenings – except Wonka’s! Have you
ever seen a single person going into that place – or coming out?’
Little Charlie looked slowly around at each of the four old faces, one
after the other, and they all looked back at him. They were friendly
smiling faces, but they were also quite serious. There was no sign of
joking or leg-pulling on any of them.
‘Well? Have you?’ asked Grandpa Joe.
‘I… I really don’t know, Grandpa,’ Charlie stammered. ‘Whenever I
walk past the factory, the gates seem to be closed.’
‘Exactly!’ said Grandpa Joe.
‘But there must be people working there…’
‘Not people, Charlie. Not ordinary people, anyway.’
‘Then who?’ cried Charlie.
‘Ah-ha… That’s it, you see… That’s another of Mr Willy Wonka’s
clevernesses.’
‘Charlie, dear,’ Mrs Bucket called out from where she was standing by
the door, ‘it’s time for bed. That’s enough for tonight.’
‘But, Mother, I must hear…’
‘Tomorrow, my darling…’
‘That’s right,’ said Grandpa Joe, ‘I’ll tell you the rest of it tomorrow
evening.’

4
The Secret Workers
The next evening, Grandpa Joe went on with his story.
‘You see, Charlie,’ he said, ‘not so very long ago there used to be
thousands of people working in Mr Willy Wonka’s factory. Then one day,
all of a sudden, Mr Wonka had to ask every single one of them to leave, to
go home, never to come back.’
‘But why?’ asked Charlie.
‘Because of spies.’
‘Spies?’
‘Yes. All the other chocolate makers, you see, had begun to grow
jealous of the wonderful sweets that Mr Wonka was making, and they
started sending in spies to steal his secret recipes. The spies took jobs in
the Wonka factory, pretending that they were ordinary workers, and
while they were there, each one of them found out exactly how a certain
special thing was made.’
‘And did they go back to their own factories and tell?’ asked Charlie.
‘They must have,’ answered Grandpa Joe, ‘because soon after that,
Fickelgruber’s factory started making an ice cream that would never
melt, even in the hottest sun. Then Mr Prodnose’s factory came out with
a chewing-gum that never lost its flavour however much you chewed it.
And then Mr Slugworth’s factory began making sugar balloons that you
could blow up to huge sizes before you popped them with a pin and
gobbled them up. And so on, and so on. And Mr Willy Wonka tore his
beard and shouted, “This is terrible! I shall be ruined! There are spies
everywhere! I shall have to close the factory!” ’
‘But he didn’t do that!’ Charlie said.
‘Oh, yes he did. He told all the workers that he was sorry, but they
would have to go home. Then, he shut the main gates and fastened them
with a chain. And suddenly, Wonka’s giant chocolate factory became

silent and deserted. The chimneys stopped smoking, the machines
stopped whirring, and from then on, not a single chocolate or sweet was
made. Not a soul went in or out, and even Mr Willy Wonka himself
disappeared completely.

‘Months and months went by,’ Grandpa Joe went on, ‘but still the
factory remained closed. And everybody said, “Poor Mr Wonka. He was
so nice. And he made such marvellous things. But he’s finished now. It’s
all over.”
‘Then something astonishing happened. One day, early in the
morning, thin columns of white smoke were seen to be coming out of the
tops of the tall chimneys of the factory! People in the town stopped and
stared. “What’s going on?” they cried. “Someone’s lit the furnaces! Mr
Wonka must be opening up again!” They ran to the gates, expecting to
see them wide open and Mr Wonka standing there to welcome his
workers back.
‘But no! The great iron gates were still locked and chained as securely
as ever, and Mr Wonka was nowhere to be seen.
‘ “But the factory is working!” the people shouted. “Listen! You can
hear the machines! They’re all whirring again! And you can smell the
smell of melting chocolate in the air!” ’
Grandpa Joe leaned forward and laid a long bony finger on Charlie’s
knee, and he said softly, ‘But most mysterious of all, Charlie, were the
shadows in the windows of the factory. The people standing on the street
outside could see small dark shadows moving about behind the frosted
glass windows.’
‘Shadows of whom?’ said Charlie quickly.
‘That’s exactly what everybody else wanted to know.

‘ “The place is full of workers!” the people shouted. “But nobody’s
gone in! The gates are locked! It’s crazy! Nobody ever comes out,
either!”
‘But there was no question at all,’ said Grandpa Joe, ‘that the factory
was running. And it’s gone on running ever since, for these last ten
years. What’s more, the chocolates and sweets it’s been turning out have
become more fantastic and delicious all the time. And of course now
when Mr Wonka invents some new and wonderful sweet, neither Mr
Fickelgruber nor Mr Prodnose nor Mr Slugworth nor anybody else is able
to copy it. No spies can go into the factory to find out how it is made.’
‘But Grandpa, who,’ cried Charlie, ‘who is Mr Wonka using to do all
the work in the factory?’
‘Nobody knows, Charlie.’
‘But that’s ahsurd! Hasn’t someone asked Mr Wonka?’
‘Nobody sees him any more. He never comes out. The only things that
come out of that place are chocolates and sweets. They come out
through a special trap door in the wall, all packed and addressed, and
they are picked up every day by Post Office trucks.’
‘But Grandpa, what sort of people are they that work in there?’
‘My dear boy,’ said Grandpa Joe, ‘that is one of the great mysteries of
the chocolate-making world. We know only one thing about them. They
are very small. The faint shadows that sometimes appear behind the
windows, especially late at night when the lights are on, are those of tiny
people, people no taller than my knee…’
‘There aren’t any such people,’ Charlie said.
Just then, Mr Bucket, Charlie’s father, came into the room. He was
home from the toothpaste factory, and he was waving an evening
newspaper rather excitedly. ‘Have you heard the news?’ he cried. He
held up the paper so that they could see the huge headline. The headline
said:
WONKA FACTORY TO BE OPENED AT LAST TO LUCKY FEW

5
The Golden Tickets
‘You mean people are actually going to be allowed to go inside the
factory?’ cried Grandpa Joe. ‘Read us what it says – quickly!’
‘All right,’ said Mr Bucket, smoothing out the newspaper. ‘Listen.’

Evening Bulletin
Mr Willy Wonka, the confectionery genius whom nobody has seen for the last
tenyears, sent out the following notice today:
I, Willy Wonka, have decided to allow five children – just five,
mind you, and no more – to visit my factory this year. These lucky
five will be shown around personally by me, and they will be
allowed to see all the secrets and the magic of my factory. Then, at
the end of the tour, as a special present, all of them will be given
enough chocolates and sweets to last them for the rest of their
lives! So watch out for the Golden Tickets! Five Golden Tickets have
beenprinted on golden paper, and these five Golden Tickets have
been hidden underneath the ordinary wrapping paper of five
ordinary bars of chocolate. These five chocolate bars may be
anywhere – in any shop in any street in any town in any country in
the world – upon any counter where Wonka’s Sweets are sold. And
the five lucky finders of these five Golden Tickets are the only ones
who will be allowed to visit my factory and see what it’s like now
inside! Good luck to you all, and happy hunting! (Signed Willy
Wonka.)
‘The man’s dotty!’ muttered Grandma Josephine.
‘He’s brilliant!’ cried Grandpa Joe. ‘He’s a magician! Just imagine
what will happen now! The whole world will be searching for those

Golden Tickets! Everyone will be buying Wonka’s chocolate bars in the
hope of finding one! He’ll sell more than ever before! Oh, how exciting it
would be to find one!’
‘And all the chocolate and sweets that you could eat for the rest of
your life – free!’ said Grandpa George. ‘Just imagine that!’
‘They’d have to deliver them in a truck!’ said Grandma Georgina.
‘It makes me quite ill to think of it,’ said Grandma Josephine.
‘Nonsense!’ cried Grandpa Joe. ‘Wouldn’t it be something, Charlie, to
open a bar of chocolate and see a Golden Ticket glistening inside!’
‘It certainly would, Grandpa. But there isn’t a hope,’ Charlie said
sadly. ‘I only get one bar a year.’
‘You never know, darling,’ said Grandma Georgina. ‘It’s your birthday
next week. You have as much chance as anybody else.’
‘I’m afraid that simply isn’t true,’ said Grandpa George. ‘The kids who
are going to find the Golden Tickets are the ones who can afford to buy
bars of chocolate every day. Our Charlie gets only one a year. There isn’t
a hope.’

6
The First Two Finders
The very next day, the first Golden Ticket was found. The finder was a
boy called Augustus Gloop, and Mr Bucket’s evening newspaper carried
a large picture of him on the front page. The picture showed a nine-yearold boy who was so enormously fat he looked as though he had been
blown up with a powerful pump. Great flabby folds of fat bulged out
from every part of his body, and his face was like a monstrous ball of
dough with two small greedy curranty eyes peering out upon the world.
The town in which Augustus Gloop lived, the newspaper said, had gone
wild with excitement over their hero. Flags were flying from all the
windows, children had been given a holiday from school, and a parade
was being organized in honour of the famous youth.
‘I just knew Augustus would find a Golden Ticket,’ his mother had told
the newspapermen. ‘He eats so many bars of chocolate a day that it was
almost impossible for him not to find one. Eating is his hobby, you know.
That’s all he’s interested in. But still, that’s better than being a hooligan
and shooting off zip guns and things like that in his spare time, isn’t it?
And what I always say is, he wouldn’t go on eating like he does unless
he needed nourishment, would he? It’s all vitamins, anyway. What a thrill
it will be for him to visit Mr Wonka’s marvellous factory! We’re just as
proud as anything!’

‘What a revolting woman,’ said Grandma Josephine.
‘And what a repulsive boy,’ said Grandma Georgina.
‘Only four Golden Tickets left,’ said Grandpa George. ‘I wonder who’ll
get those.’
And now the whole country, indeed, the whole world, seemed
suddenly to be caught up in a mad chocolate-buying spree, everybody
searching frantically for those precious remaining tickets. Fully grown
women were seen going into sweet shops and buying ten Wonka bars at
a time, then tearing off the wrappers on the spot and peering eagerly
underneath for a glint of golden paper. Children were taking hammers
and smashing their piggy banks and running out to the shops with
handfuls of money. In one city, a famous gangster robbed a bank of a
thousand pounds and spent the whole lot on Wonka bars that same
afternoon. And when the police entered his house to arrest him, they
found him sitting on the floor amidst mountains of chocolate, ripping off
the wrappers with the blade of a long dagger. In far-off Russia, a woman
called Charlotte Russe claimed to have found the second ticket, but it
turned out to be a clever fake. The famous English scientist, Professor
Foulbody, invented a machine which would tell you at once, without

opening the wrapper of a bar of chocolate, whether or not there was a
Golden Ticket hidden underneath it. The machine had a mechanical arm
that shot out with tremendous force and grabbed hold of anything that
had the slightest bit of gold inside it, and for a moment, it looked like
the answer to everything. But unfortunately, while the Professor was
showing off the machine to the public at the sweet counter of a large
department store, the mechanical arm shot out and made a grab for the
gold filling in the back tooth of a duchess who was standing near by.
There was an ugly scene, and the machine was smashed by the crowd.

Suddenly, on the day before Charlie Bucket’s birthday, the newspapers
announced that the second Golden Ticket had been found. The lucky
person was a small girl called Veruca Salt who lived with her rich
parents in a great city far away. Once again Mr Bucket’s evening
newspaper carried a big picture of the finder. She was sitting between
her beaming father and mother in the living room of their house, waving
the Golden Ticket above her head, and grinning from ear to ear.
Veruca’s father, Mr Salt, had eagerly explained to the newspapermen
exactly how the ticket was found. ‘You see, boys,’ he had said, ‘as soon
as my little girl told me that she simply had to have one of those Golden
Tickets, I went out into the town and started buying up all the Wonka
bars I could lay my hands on. Thousands of them, I must have bought.
Hundreds of thousands! Then I had them loaded on to trucks and sent
directly to my own factory. I’m in the peanut business, you see, and I’ve

got about a hundred women working for me over at my place, shelling
peanuts for roasting and salting. That’s what they do all day long, those
women, they sit there shelling peanuts. So I says to them, “Okay, girls,” I
says, “from now on, you can stop shelling peanuts and start shelling the
wrappers off these chocolate bars instead!” And they did. I had every
worker in the place yanking the paper off those bars of chocolate full
speed ahead from morning till night.
‘But three days went by, and we had no luck. Oh, it was terrible! My
little Veruca got more and more upset each day, and every time I went
home she would scream at me, “Where’s my Golden Ticket! I want my
Golden Ticket!” And she would lie for hours on the floor, kicking and
yelling in the most disturbing way. Well, I just hated to see my little girl
feeling unhappy like that, so I vowed I would keep up the search until
I’d got her what she wanted. Then suddenly… on the evening of the
fourth day, one of my women workers yelled, “I’ve got it! A Golden
Ticket!” And I said, “Give it to me, quick!” and she did, and I rushed it
home and gave it to my darling Veruca, and now she’s all smiles, and we
have a happy home once again.’
‘That’s even worse than the fat boy,’ said Grandma Josephine.
‘She needs a really good spanking,’ said Grandma Georgina.
‘I don’t think the girl’s father played it quite fair, Grandpa, do you?’
Charlie murmured.
‘He spoils her,’ Grandpa Joe said. ‘And no good can ever come from
spoiling a child like that, Charlie, you mark my words.’
‘Come to bed, my darling,’ said Charlie’s mother. ‘Tomorrow’s your
birthday, don’t forget that, so I expect you’ll be up early to open your
present.’
‘A Wonka chocolate bar!’ cried Charlie. ‘It is a Wonka bar, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, my love,’ his mother said. ‘Of course it is.’
‘Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I found the third Golden Ticket inside
it?’ Charlie said.
‘Bring it in here when you get it,’ Grandpa Joe said. ‘Then we can all
watch you taking off the wrapper.’

7
Charlie’s Birthday
‘Happy birthday!’ cried the four old grandparents, as Charlie came into
their room early the next morning.
Charlie smiled nervously and sat down on the edge of the bed. He was
holding his present, his only present, very carefully in his two hands.
WONKA’S WHIPPLE-SCRUMPTIOUS FUDGEMALLOW DELIGHT, it said
on the wrapper.
The four old people, two at either end of the bed, propped themselves
up on their pillows and stared with anxious eyes at the bar of chocolate
in Charlie’s hands.
Mr and Mrs Bucket came in and stood at the foot of the bed, watching
Charlie.
The room became silent. Everybody was waiting now for Charlie to
start opening his present. Charlie looked down at the bar of chocolate.
He ran his fingers slowly back and forth along the length of it, stroking it
lovingly, and the shiny paper wrapper made little sharp crackly noises in
the quiet room.
Then Mrs Bucket said gently, ‘You mustn’t be too disappointed, my
darling, if you don’t find what you’re looking for underneath that
wrapper. You really can’t expect to be as lucky as all that.’
‘She’s quite right,’ Mr Bucket said.
Charlie didn’t say anything.
‘After all,’ Grandma Josephine said, ‘in the whole wide world there
are only three tickets left to be found.’
‘The thing to remember,’ Grandma Georgina said, ‘is that whatever
happens, you’ll still have the bar of chocolate.’
‘Wonka’s Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight!’ cried Grandpa
George. ‘It’s the best of them all! You’ll just love it!’
‘Yes,’ Charlie whispered. ‘I know.’

‘Just forget all about those Golden Tickets and enjoy the chocolate,’
Grandpa Joe said. ‘Why don’t you do that?’
They all knew it was ridiculous to expect this one poor little bar of
chocolate to have a magic ticket inside it, and they were trying as gently
and as kindly as they could to prepare Charlie for the disappointment.
But there was one other thing that the grown-ups also knew, and it was
this: that however small the chance might be of striking lucky, the chance
was there.
The chance had to be there.
This particular bar of chocolate had as much chance as any other of
having a Golden Ticket.
And that was why all the grandparents and parents in the room were
actually just as tense and excited as Charlie was, although they were
pretending to be very calm.
‘You’d better go ahead and open it up, or you’ll be late for school,’
Grandpa Joe said.
‘You might as well get it over with,’ Grandpa George said.
‘Open it, my dear,’ Grandma Georgina said. ‘Please open it. You’re
making me jumpy.’
Very slowly, Charlie’s fingers began to tear open one small corner of
the wrapping paper.
The old people in the bed all leaned forward, craning their scraggy
necks.

Then suddenly, as though he couldn’t bear the suspense any longer,
Charlie tore the wrapper right down the middle… and on to his lap,

there fell… a light-brown creamy-coloured bar of chocolate.
There was no sign of a Golden Ticket anywhere.
‘Well – that’s that!’ said Grandpa Joe brightly. ‘It’s just what we
expected.’
Charlie looked up. Four kind old faces were watching him intently
from the bed. He smiled at them, a small sad smile, and then he
shrugged his shoulders and picked up the chocolate bar and held it out
to his mother, and said, ‘Here, Mother, have a bit. We’ll share it. I want
everybody to taste it.’
‘Certainly not!’ his mother said.
And the others all cried, ‘No, no! We wouldn’t dream of it! It’s all
yours!’
‘Please,’ begged Charlie, turning round and offering it to Grandpa Joe.
But neither he nor anyone else would take even a tiny bit.
‘It’s time to go to school, my darling,’ Mrs Bucket said, putting an arm
around Charlie’s skinny shoulders. ‘Come on, or you’ll be late.’

8
Two More Golden Tickets Found
That evening, Mr Bucket’s newspaper announced the finding of not only
the third Golden Ticket, but the fourth as well. TWO GOLDEN TICKETS
FOUND TODAY, screamed the headlines. ONLY ONE MORE LEFT.
‘All right,’ said Grandpa Joe, when the whole family was gathered in
the old people’s room after supper, ‘let’s hear who found them.’
‘The third ticket,’ read Mr Bucket, holding the newspaper up close to
his face because his eyes were bad and he couldn’t afford glasses, ‘the
third ticket was found by a Miss Violet Beauregarde. There was great
excitement in the Beauregarde household when our reporter arrived to
interview the lucky young lady – cameras were clicking and flashbulbs
were flashing and people were pushing and jostling and trying to get a
bit closer to the famous girl. And the famous girl was standing on a chair
in the living room waving the Golden Ticket madly at arm’s length as
though she were flagging a taxi. She was talking very fast and very
loudly to everyone, but it was not easy to hear all that she said because
she was chewing so ferociously upon a piece of gum at the same time.

‘ “I’m a gum chewer, normally,” she shouted, “but when I heard about
these ticket things of Mr Wonka’s, I gave up gum and started on
chocolate bars in the hope of striking lucky. Now, of course, I’m back on
gum. I just adore gum. I can’t do without it. I munch it all day long
except for a few minutes at mealtimes when I take it out and stick it
behind my ear for safekeeping. To tell you the truth, I simply wouldn’t
feel comfortable if I didn’t have that little wedge of gum to chew on every
moment of the day, I really wouldn’t. My mother says it’s not ladylike
and it looks ugly to see a girl’s jaws going up and down like mine do all
the time, but I don’t agree. And who’s she to criticize, anyway, because
if you ask me, I’d say that her jaws are going up and down almost as
much as mine are just from yelling at me every minute of the day.”
‘ “Now, Violet,” Mrs Beauregarde said from a far corner of the room
where she was standing on the piano to avoid being trampled by the
mob.
‘ “All right, Mother, keep your hair on!” Miss Beauregarde shouted.
“And now,” she went on, turning to the reporters again, “it may interest
you to know that this piece of gum I’m chewing right at this moment is
one I’ve been working on for over three months solid. That’s a record, that
is. It’s beaten the record held by my best friend, Miss Cornelia
Prinzmetel. And was she furious! It’s my most treasured possession now,
this piece of gum is. At night-time, I just stick it on the end of the
bedpost, and it’s as good as ever in the mornings -a bit hard at first,
maybe, but it soon softens up again after I’ve given it a few good chews.
Before I started chewing for the world record, I used to change my piece
of gum once a day. I used to do it in our lift on the way home from
school. Why the lift? Because I liked sticking the gooey piece that I’d just
finished with on to one of the control buttons. Then the next person who
came along and pressed the button got my old gum on the end of his or
her finger. Ha-ha! And what a racket they kicked up, some of them. You
get the best results with women who have expensive gloves on. Oh yes,
I’m thrilled to be going to Mr Wonka’s factory. And I understand that
afterwards he’s going to give me enough gum to last me for the rest of
my whole life. Whoopee! Hooray!” ’
‘Beastly girl,’ said Grandma Josephine.
‘Despicable!’ said Grandma Georgina. ‘She’ll come to a sticky end one

day, chewing all that gum, you see if she doesn’t.’
‘And who got the fourth Golden Ticket?’ Charlie asked.
‘Now, let me see,’ said Mr Bucket, peering at the newspaper again. ‘Ah
yes, here we are. The fourth Golden Ticket,’ he read, ‘was found by a
boy called Mike Teavee.’
‘Another bad lot, I’ll be bound,’ muttered Grandma Josephine.
‘Don’t interrupt, Grandma,’ said Mrs Bucket.
‘The Teavee household,’ said Mr Bucket, going on with his reading,
‘was crammed, like all the others, with excited visitors when our
reporter arrived, but young Mike Teavee, the lucky winner, seemed
extremely annoyed by the whole business. “Can’t you fools see I’m
watching television?” he said angrily. “I wish you wouldn’t interrupt!”
‘The nine-year-old boy was seated before an enormous television set,
with his eyes glued to the screen, and he was watching a film in which
one bunch of gangsters was shooting up another bunch of gangsters with
machine guns. Mike Teavee himself had no less than eighteen toy pistols
of various sizes hanging from belts around his body, and every now and
again he would leap up into the air and fire off half a dozen rounds from
one or another of these weapons.

‘ “Quiet!” he shouted, when someone tried to ask him a question.
“Didn’t I tell you not to interrupt! This show’s an absolute whiz-banger!
It’s terrific! I watch it every day. I watch all of them every day, even the
rotten ones, where there’s no shooting. I like the gangsters best. They’re
terrific, those gangsters! Especially when they start pumping each other

full of lead, or flashing the old stilettos, or giving each other the onetwo-three with their knuckledusters! Gosh, what wouldn’t I give to be
doing that myself! It’s the life, I tell you! It’s terrific!” ’
‘That’s quite enough!’ snapped Grandma Josephine. ‘I can’t bear to
listen to it!’
‘Nor me,’ said Grandma Georgina. ‘Do all children behave like this
nowadays – like these brats we’ve been hearing about?’
‘Of course not,’ said Mr Bucket, smiling at the old lady in the bed.
‘Some do, of course. In fact, quite a lot of them do. But not all.’
‘And now there’s only one ticket left!’ said Grandpa George.
‘Quite so,’ sniffed Grandma Georgina. ‘And just as sure as I’ll be
having cabbage soup for supper tomorrow, that ticket’ll go to some nasty
little beast who doesn’t deserve it!’

9
Grandpa Joe Takes a Gamble
The next day, when Charlie came home from school and went in to see
his grandparents, he found that only Grandpa Joe was awake. The other
three were all snoring loudly.
‘Ssshh!’ whispered Grandpa Joe, and he beckoned Charlie to come
closer. Charlie tiptoed over and stood beside the bed. The old man gave
Charlie a sly grin, and then he started rummaging under his pillow with
one hand; and when the hand came out again, there was an ancient
leather purse clutched in the fingers. Under cover of the bedclothes, the
old man opened the purse and tipped it upside down. Out fell a single
silver sixpence. ‘It’s my secret hoard,’ he whispered. ‘The others don’t
know I’ve got it. And now, you and I are going to have one more fling at
finding that last ticket. How about it, eh? But you’ll have to help me.’
‘Are you sure you want to spend your money on that, Grandpa?’
Charlie whispered.
‘Of course I’m sure!’ spluttered the old man excitedly. ‘Don’t stand
there arguing! I’m as keen as you are to find that ticket! Here – take the
money and run down the street to the nearest shop and buy the first
Wonka bar you see and bring it straight back to me, and we’ll open it
together.’
Charlie took the little silver coin, and slipped quickly out of the room.
In five minutes, he was back.
‘Have you got it?’ whispered Grandpa Joe, his eyes shining with
excitement.
Charlie nodded and held out the bar of chocolate. WONKA’S NUTTY
CRUNCH SURPRISE, it said on the wrapper.
‘Good!’ the old man whispered, sitting up in the bed and rubbing his
hands. ‘Now – come over here and sit close to me and we’ll open it
together. Are you ready?’

‘Yes,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m ready.’
‘All right. You tear off the first bit.’
‘No,’ Charlie said, ‘you paid for it. You do it all.’
The old man’s fingers were trembling most terribly as they fumbled
with the wrapper. ‘We don’t have a hope, really,’ he whispered, giggling
a bit. ‘You do know we don’t have a hope, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Charlie said. ‘I know that.’
They looked at each other, and both started giggling nervously.
‘Mind you,’ said Grandpa Joe, ‘there is just that tiny chance that it
might be the one, don’t you agree?’
‘Yes,’ Charlie said. ‘Of course. Why don’t you open it, Grandpa?’
‘All in good time, my boy, all in good time. Which end do you think I
ought to open first?’
‘That corner. The one furthest from you. Just tear off a tiny bit, but
not quite enough for us to see anything.’
‘Like that?’ said the old man.
‘Yes. Now a little bit more.’
‘You finish it,’ said Grandpa Joe. ‘I’m too nervous.’
‘No, Grandpa. You must do it yourself.’
‘Very well, then. Here goes.’ He tore off the wrapper.
They both stared at what lay underneath. It was a bar of chocolate –
nothing more.
All at once, they both saw the funny side of the whole thing, and they
burst into peals of laughter.
‘What on earth’s going on!’ cried Grandma Josephine, waking up
suddenly.
‘Nothing,’ said Grandpa Joe. ‘You go on back to sleep.’

10
The Family Begins to Starve
During the next two weeks, the weather turned very cold. First came the
snow. It began very suddenly one morning just as Charlie Bucket was
getting dressed for school. Standing by the window, he saw the huge
flakes drifting slowly down out of an icy sky that was the colour of steel.
By evening, it lay four feet deep around the tiny house, and Mr Bucket
had to dig a path from the front door to the road.
After the snow, there came a freezing gale that blew for days and days
without stopping. And oh, how bitter cold it was! Everything that
Charlie touched seemed to be made of ice, and each time he stepped
outside the door, the wind was like a knife on his cheek.
Inside the house, little jets of freezing air came rushing in through the
sides of the windows and under the doors, and there was no place to go
to escape them. The four old ones lay silent and huddled in their bed,
trying to keep the cold out of their bones. The excitement over the
Golden Tickets had long since been forgotten. Nobody in the family gave
a thought now to anything except the two vital problems of trying to
keep warm and trying to get enough to eat.
There is something about very cold weather that gives one an
enormous appetite. Most of us find ourselves beginning to crave rich
steaming stews and hot apple pies and all kinds of delicious warming
dishes; and because we are all a great deal luckier than we realize, we
usually get what we want – or near enough. But Charlie Bucket never
got what he wanted because the family couldn’t afford it, and as the cold
weather went on and on, he became ravenously and desperately hungry.
Both bars of chocolate, the birthday one and the one Grandpa Joe had
bought, had long since been nibbled away, and all he got now were
those thin, cabbagy meals three times a day.
Then all at once, the meals became even thinner.

The reason for this was that the toothpaste factory, the place where
Mr Bucket worked, suddenly went bust and had to close down. Quickly,
Mr Bucket tried to get another job. But he had no luck. In the end, the
only way in which he managed to earn a few pennies was by shovelling
snow in the streets. But it wasn’t enough to buy even a quarter of the
food that seven people needed. The situation became desperate.
Breakfast was a single slice of bread for each person now, and lunch was
maybe half a boiled potato.
Slowly but surely, everybody in the house began to starve.
And every day, little Charlie Bucket, trudging
through the snow on his way to school, would have to pass Mr Willy
Wonka’s giant chocolate factory. And every day, as he came near to it,
he would lift his small pointed nose high in the air and sniff the
wonderful sweet smell of melting chocolate. Sometimes, he would stand
motionless outside the gates for several minutes on end, taking deep
swallowing breaths as though he were trying to eat the smell itself.
‘That child,’ said Grandpa Joe, poking his head up from under the
blanket one icy morning, ‘that child has got to have more food. It doesn’t
matter about us. We’re too old to bother with. But a growing boy! He
can’t go on like this! He’s beginning to look like a skeleton!’
‘What can one do?’ murmured Grandma Josephine miserably. ‘He
refuses to take any of ours. I hear his mother tried to slip her own piece
of bread on to his plate at breakfast this morning, but he wouldn’t touch
it. He made her take it back.’
‘He’s a fine little fellow,’ said Grandpa George. ‘He deserves better
than this.’
The cruel weather went on and on.
And every day, Charlie Bucket grew thinner and thinner. His face
became frighteningly white and pinched. The skin was drawn so tightly
over the cheeks that you could see the shapes of the bones underneath. It
seemed doubtful whether he could go on much longer like this without
becoming dangerously ill.
And now, very calmly, with that curious wisdom that seems to come
so often to small children in times of hardship, he began to make little

changes here and there in some of the things that he did, so as to save
his strength. In the mornings, he left the house ten minutes earlier so
that he could walk slowly to school, without ever having to run. He sat
quietly in the classroom during break, resting himself, while the others
rushed outdoors and threw snowballs and wrestled in the snow.
Everything he did now, he did slowly and carefully, to prevent
exhaustion.
Then one afternoon, walking back home with the icy wind in his face
(and incidentally feeling hungrier than he had ever felt before), his eye
was caught suddenly by something silvery lying in the gutter, in the
snow. Charlie stepped off the kerb and bent down to examine it. Part of
it was buried under the snow, but he saw at once what it was.
It was a fifty-pence piece!
Quickly he looked around him.
Had somebody just dropped it?
No – that was impossible because of the way part of it was buried.
Several people went hurrying past him on the pavement, their chins
sunk deep in the collars of their coats, their feet crunching in the snow.
None of them was searching for any money; none of them was taking the
slightest notice of the small boy crouching in the gutter.
Then was it his, this fifty pence?
Could he have it?
Carefully, Charlie pulled it out from under the snow. It was damp and
dirty, but otherwise perfect.

A WHOLE fifty pence!
He held it tightly between his shivering fingers, gazing down at it. It
meant one thing to him at that moment, only one thing. It meant FOOD.
Automatically, Charlie turned and began moving towards the nearest
shop. It was only ten paces away… it was a newspaper and stationery
shop, the kind that sells almost everything, including sweets and
cigars… and what he would do, he whispered quickly to himself… he
would buy one luscious bar of chocolate and eat it all up, every bit of it,
right then and there… and the rest of the money he would take straight
back home and give to his mother.

11
The Miracle
Charlie entered the shop and laid the damp fifty pence on the counter.
‘One Wonka’s Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight,’ he said,
remembering how much he had loved the one he had on his birthday.
The man behind the counter looked fat and well-fed. He had big lips
and fat cheeks and a very fat neck. The fat around his neck bulged out
all around the top of his collar like a rubber ring. He turned and reached
behind him for the chocolate bar, then he turned back again and handed
it to Charlie. Charlie grabbed it and quickly tore off the wrapper and
took an enormous bite. Then he took another… and another… and oh,
the joy of being able to cram large pieces of something sweet and solid
into one’s mouth! The sheer blissful joy of being able to fill one’s mouth
with rich solid food!
‘You look like you wanted that one, sonny,’ the shopkeeper said
pleasantly.
Charlie nodded, his mouth bulging with chocolate.
The shopkeeper put Charlie’s change on the counter. ‘Take it easy,’ he
said. ‘It’ll give you a tummy-ache if you swallow it like that without
chewing.’
Charlie went on wolfing the chocolate. He couldn’t stop. And in less
than half a minute, the whole thing had disappeared down his throat. He
was quite out of breath, but he felt marvellously, extraordinarily happy.
He reached out a hand to take the change. Then he paused. His eyes
were just above the level of the counter. They were staring at the silver
coins lying there. The coins were all five-penny pieces. There were nine
of them altogether. Surely it wouldn’t matter if he spent just one more…
‘I think,’ he said quietly, ‘I think… I’ll have just one more of those
chocolate bars. The same kind as before, please.’

‘Why not?’ the fat shopkeeper said, reaching behind him again and
taking another Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight from the
shelf. He laid it on the counter.
Charlie picked it up and tore off the wrapper… and suddenly… from
underneath the wrapper… there came a brilliant flash of gold.
Charlie’s heart stood still.
‘It’s a Golden Ticket!’ screamed the shopkeeper, leaping about a foot
in the air. ‘You’ve got a Golden Ticket! You’ve found the last Golden
Ticket! Hey, would you believe it! Come and look at this, everybody!
The kid’s found Wonka’s last Golden Ticket! There it is! It’s right here in
his hands!’
It seemed as though the shopkeeper might be going to have a fit. ‘In
my shop, too!’ he yelled. ‘He found it right here in my own little shop!
Somebody call the newspapers quick and let them know! Watch out
now, sonny! Don’t tear it as you unwrap it! That thing’s precious!’
In a few seconds, there was a crowd of about twenty people clustering
around Charlie, and many more were pushing their way in from the
street. Everybody wanted to get a look at the Golden Ticket and at the
lucky finder.
‘Where is it?’ somebody shouted. ‘Hold it up so all of us can see it!’
‘There it is, there!’ someone else shouted. ‘He’s holding it in his hands!
See the gold shining!’
‘How did he manage to find it, I’d like to know?’ a large boy shouted
angrily. ‘Twenty bars a day I’ve been buying for weeks and weeks!’
‘Think of all the free stuff he’ll be getting too!’ another boy said

enviously. ‘A lifetime supply!’
‘He’ll need it, the skinny little shrimp!’ a girl said, laughing.
Charlie hadn’t moved. He hadn’t even unwrapped the Golden Ticket
from around the chocolate. He was standing very still, holding it tightly
with both hands while the crowd pushed and shouted all around him. He
felt quite dizzy. There was a peculiar floating sensation coming over
him, as though he were floating up in the air like a balloon. His feet
didn’t seem to be touching the ground at all. He could hear his heart
thumping away loudly somewhere in his throat.
At that point, he became aware of a hand resting lightly on his
shoulder, and when he looked up, he saw a tall man standing over him.
‘Listen,’ the man whispered. ‘I’ll buy it from you. I’ll give you fifty
pounds. How about it, eh? And I’ll give you a new bicycle as well.
Okay?’
‘Are you crazy?’ shouted a woman who was standing equally close.
‘Why, I’d give him two hundred pounds for that ticket! You want to sell
that ticket for two hundred pounds, young man?’
‘That’s quite enough of that!’ the fat shopkeeper shouted, pushing his
way through the crowd and taking Charlie firmly by the arm. ‘Leave the
kid alone, will you! Make way there! Let him out!’ And to Charlie, as he
led him to the door, he whispered, ‘Don’t you let anybody have it! Take
it straight home, quickly, before you lose it! Run all the way and don’t
stop till you get there, you understand?’
Charlie nodded.
‘You know something,’ the fat shopkeeper said, pausing a moment and
smiling at Charlie, ‘I have a feeling you needed a break like this. I’m
awfully glad you got it. Good luck to you, sonny.’
‘Thank you,