Esio Trot features no chocolatiers bordering on the insane or crafty foxes outwitting farmers nor are there any witches, gremlins or crocodiles to speak of. Even though it does feature nearly one-hundred-fifty tortoises, none of them stand out, act unlike real-life tortoises or have a distinctive imaginative personality made possible through anthropomorphizing. And yet, hard as it may be to believe, Esio Trot easily qualifies as one of Roald Dahl’s most revolutionary books when it comes to challenging conventions and traditions of children’s literature.
Why? Because it is a story about two older characters falling in love and living happily ever after. The world of children’s literature is not exactly overflowing with such tales. Especially not children’s stories accompanied by cartoonish drawings and especially not when many of those illustrations are populated by an abundance of tortoises. The title of the story is actually “tortoise” spelled backwards and sliced in half and it is entirely appropriate.
This is a story that seems “backwards” when it comes to the conventions of kiddie lit. They are usually about child characters while children in this story are of no real significance whatever. Stories for kids typically rely upon the introduction of something beyond the natural world—magic or other aspects which could only exist in the imagination—whereas this story could, though highly unlikely, actually take place in reality. Outrageous villainy is also absent from the narrative.
Instead, what young readers are confronted with when they open the cover of Esio Trot is a lesson in the perversity of romance. Mrs. Silver’s husband—the “love of her life” one can naturally assume—and his role in her life has been taken over by a tortoise. Mr. Hoppy is so desirous of replacing that tortoise and taking over the role of husband that he goes to lengths putting absurd weight on his finances and time all the purpose of deceiving her into becoming his “slave for life.”
It is nothing less than a viciously realistic portrait of the usually unspoken perverse vagaries of finding love in the adult world. Hardly the stuff one expects to find in a story written for and marketed to children. Esio Trot is that slices right through all the conventions of children’s literature and establishes itself as one of the most revolutionary works the genre has ever produced.
