Chapter 1
School teachers suffer a good deal from having to listen to this sort of twaddle from proud parents, but they usually get their own back when the time comes to write the end-of-term reports. If I w...
Chapter 2
She resented being told constantly that she was ignorant and stupid when she knew she wasn't. […] She decided that every time her father or her mother was beastly to her, she would get her own ba...
Chapter 3
She gave the hat a sharp yank. Mr Wormwood let out a yell that rattled the window-panes. "Ow-w-w!" he screamed. "Don't do that! Let go! You'll take half the skin off my forehead!" (3.5)
Chapter 4
"I know it's a ghost!" Matilda said. "I've heard it here before! This room is haunted! I thought you knew that." (4.56)
Chapter 5
The father glanced down at the paper in his hand. He seemed to stiffen. He became very quiet. There was a silence. Then he said, "Say that again." (5.30)
Chapter 6
She looked up. She caught sight of her husband. She stopped dead. Then she let out a scream that seemed to lift her right up into the air and she dropped the plate with a crash and a splash on to t...
Chapter 7
Miss Honey was feeling quite quivery. There was no doubt in her mind that she had met a truly extraordinary mathematical brain, and words like child-genius and prodigy went flitting through her hea...
Chapter 8
[Miss Honey] felt wildly excited. She had just met a small girl who possessed, or so it seemed to her, quite extraordinary qualities of brilliance. There had not been time yet to find out exactly h...
Chapter 9
"I'm sure you know," Miss Honey said, "that children in the bottom class at school are not expected to be able to read or spell or juggle with numbers when they first arrive. Five-year-olds cannot...
Chapter 10
Both Matilda and Lavender were enthralled. It was quite clear to them that they were at this moment standing in the presence of a master. Here was somebody who had brought the art of skullduggery t...
Chapter 11
As the very last mouthful [of cake] disappeared, a tremendous cheer rose up from the audience and children were leaping on to their chairs and yelling and clapping and shouting, "Well done, Brucie!...
Chapter 13
"It makes me vomit," she went on, "to think that I am going to have to put up with a load of garbage like you in my school for the next six years. I can see that I'm going to have to expel as many...
Chapter 14
"[…] My idea of a perfect school, Miss Honey, is one that has no children in it at all. One of these days I shall start up a school like that. I think it will be very successful." (14.3)
Chapter 15
"I made the glass tip over.""I still don't quite understand what you mean," Miss Honey said gently."I did it with my eyes," Matilda said. "I was staring at it and wishing it to tip and then my eyes...
Chapter 16
There was a moment of silence, and Matilda, who had never before heard great romantic poetry spoken aloud, was profoundly moved. "It's like music," she whispered. (16.43)
Chapter 17
Matilda stared at her. What a marvellously brave thing Miss Honey had done. Suddenly she was a heroine in Matilda's eyes. (17.87)
Chapter 18
"After my father died, when I was five and a half, she used to make me bathe myself all alone. And if she came up and thought I hadn't washed properly she would push my head under the water and hol...
Chapter 19
From then on, every day after school, Matilda shut herself in her room and practised with the cigar. And soon it all began to come together in the most wonderful way. Six days later, by the followi...
Chapter 20
"They have all learnt their three-times table. But I see no point in teaching it to them backwards. There is little point in teaching anything backwards. The whole object of life, Headmistress, is...
Chapter 21
"This morning," Matilda said, "just for fun I tried to push something over with my eyes and I couldn't do it. Nothing moved. I didn't even feel the hotness building up behind my eyeballs. The power...