ISBN: 9780141371399
Esio Trot is a fun read actually about the growth of tortoises, written by the world’s number one story teller, Roald Dahl!
Mr Hoppy has his eye on Mrs Silver, who lives in the apartment beneath him, but Mrs Silver channels her love to her pet Tortoise, Alfie.
When Mrs Silver announes her wish for Alfie to grow just a little faster, Mr Hoppy grabs the opportunity with both hands and provides her a way to “speed up” Alfie’s growth.
Mrs Silver, totally oblivious to Tortoise growth (and other facts), applies Mr Hoppy’s “magic formula”, and it has a desired outcome for both Mrs Silver and Mr Hoppy (who eventually gains the courage to ask Mrs Silver’s hand in marriage).
“Tortoises used to be brought into England by the thousand, packed in crates, and they came mostly from North Africa. But not many years ago a law was passed that made it illegal to bring any tortoises into the country. This was not done to protect us. The little tortoise was not a danger to anybody. It was purely out of kindness to the tortoise itself. You see, the traders who brought them in used to cram hundreds of them tightly into the packing-crates without food or water and in such horrible conditions that a great many of them always died on the sea-journey over. So rather than allow this cruelty to go on, the Government stopped the whole business.
The things you are going to read about in this story all happened in the days when anyone could go out and buy a nice little tortoise from a pet-shop”.
~ Roald Dahl
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