BOOK REVIEW : RATBURGER BY DAVID WALLIAMS

FICTION
 Title : RATBURGER
 Author : DAVID WALLIAMS
 Publisher : HARPER COLLINS CHILDREN’S BOOKS
 Number of pages : 316
 Published Year : 2012
 Published Place : GREAT BRITAIN
 Edition : 1ST EDITION
 Price : $ 10.99

I wish a very Good morning/afternoon to all the honourable judges, respected

timekeepers, distinguished guests, teachers and students.

I am Ahilvani A/P Thirunavukkarasu, a form 4 student of SMK Seksyen 10 Kota

Damansara. Today, I would like talk about a wickedly funny number one bestseller book by
David Walliams a famous writer of children’s books. He is well known for all his comedy
genre books having sold more than 25 million copies worldwide. Among these millions of
copies, the book entitled Ratburger was my favourite one.

Walliams was born in the London Borough of Merton and grew up in Surrey. He was
educated at Reigate Grammar School in Reigate, before graduating with a Bachelor of Arts
(Drama) from the University of Bristol. He began performing with the National Youth
Theatre in the 1990s, where he met his comedy partner Matt Lucas. From 2003 to 2005,
Walliams co-wrote and co-starred in three series of the BBC sketch show Little
Britain alongside Lucas. The programme first aired on BBC Three before moving to the more
mainstream BBC One, being deemed a critical success and hit with viewing figures. In early
2008 Walliams signed a contract with HarperCollins to publish two children's books. The
debut novel, The Boy in the Dress, illustrated by Quentin Blake, was released worldwide on
1st November 2008. It explores several of the themes of Little Britain from Walliams' own
life on an emotional level, such as the camp humour of cross-dressing and effeminacy. His
children’s novels include The Boy in the Dress, Mr Stink, Billionaire Boy, Gangsta Granny,
Ratburger, Demon Dentist, Awful Auntie, Grandpa’s Great Escape, The Midnight Gang, Bad
Dad, The Ice Monster and Fing. This novel won the award for best TV Movie/Mini-Series in
the United Kingdom.

In September 2012 , Walliams released his fifth children's book, Ratburger, telling the
story of a young girl named Zoe whose life is a misery as she has an evil stepmother. Zoe’s
stepmother, Sheila is lazy, casually cruel and self-centred. She's grubby and smelly, and she
eats prawn cocktail crisps from morning till night. Worst of all, Zoe can remember a time
before Sheila appeared on the scene when she was actually happy, even after her real mum
had died.

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Believe it or not, Sheila has a couple of rivals for the title of Worst Villain in the Book. First
of all there's Tina Trotts, a fourteen-year-old girl who could make a grown man cry – and
often does. Her speciality is flobbing on Zoe's head. And then there's Burt, who's spotted
Zoe's secret pet rat Armitage and intends to steal him for lunch. Indeed, the only good person
in the book until quite near the end is the local shopkeeper who lets Zoe have a quick lick of
the sweets he sells when she's hungry.

Part of the fun of books like this is that the plot is utterly absurd, in the real sense of the term.
Yes, there are lots of children in real life who live in poverty. Yes, they have to endure
loveless stepfamilies. But Walliams takes these miseries and turns them into a laugh-out-loud
(and sometimes groan-out-loud) silliness which is so extreme it becomes a pleasure to read,
ably assisted by Tony Ross's brilliant illustrations. Grossness is heaped upon grossness, and
the adults, even the best of the bunch, are either too foolish or too weak to do anything about
it. What is left is the lone child at the centre of the chaos, and so the reader becomes utterly
invested in her, willing her to stand firm, to beat the baddies at their own game and come out,
at the end of the book, in a happier, better place. In real life a child can't do much to fight
back against what they see as injustice, and certainly can't meet out a thoroughly satisfying
punishment. In fiction, they can, and it is as good a reason as any other to escape into a good
book.

In my opinion, this novel is very suitable to be read for an entertainment purpose.

This is because, the language used in this novel mainly covers all the funny words that you
can find in the dictionary and sometimes hilarious words are created by the author himself
with an alert to the readers. The illustrations are really good and it kept up my mood to
continue reading the book.

When talking about the weakness of this book, only fictional lovers will find this book
interesting and creative. Therefore, imagination skill is very well required to read this book.
In my opinion, this is not a weak part of the book, thus, it can be seen as a plus point to
improve our reading skills.

The most appropriate theme for this novel is, life becomes challenging after the demise of a
close family member. The evident for this theme is, Zoe’s father becomes demotivated and
almost spends his whole day at the pub after Zoe’s mother passed away. Zoe was also
mentally tortured by her stepmother for many things.

However, the climax of the story ends with Zoe’s father helping her to save her pet rat. I was
deeply satisfied by the climax of the story and honestly, I felt that it was worth reading this
book. The moral value of this book is, we have to accept challenges in life and take them in a
positive manner in order to live a heavenly life. This moral value is clearly portrayed by the
main character, Zoe.

As expressed, this book is a picture-perfect novel and a marvellous read.