Also, the narrator's cigar-smoking fat grandma is a freaking badass.

A REAL WITCH hates children with a red-hot sizzling hatred that is more sizzling and red-hot than any hatred you could possibly imagine.

A REAL WITCH spends all her time plotting to get rid of the children in her particular territory. Her passion is to do away with them, one by one. It is all she thinks about the whole day long. Even if she is working as a cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman or driving round in a fancy car (and she could be doing any of these things), her mind will always be plotting and scheming and churning and burning and whizzing and phizzing with murderous bloodthirsty thoughts.

From Roald Dahl's 'The Witches'.

Reading that to an eight year old boy (he loves Dahl so much) whose eyes were getting more O.O by the second and then the rhythm of that last paragraph was amazingly satisfying.

Oh Dahl, why did it take until after adulthood struck and babysitting for a fan of yours for me to realize that you wrote some damn fine books?

Maybe one day I'll work up the courage to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The first movie scared the shit out of me so much I haven't been able to bring myself to it yet.