“I had a Little Nut-Tree”
Two stanzas, four lines each, is all it takes to the get the point of this comical verse in which the speaker describes his disappointment in having a nut tree that offers no nuts. The final line is the punny climax as the tree, in response to the sincere request made by the speaker for the tree to bear fruit: "Nuts to you."
“Hot and Cold”
One very nice thing about Roald Dahl is that when he writes for children, he writes for kids. True, there may be something of more mature significance, but he’s not one for tossing in filthy double entendre just to keep the attention of the parents reading the verse aloud by the bedside come the night. About the closest he comes is this poem about a child’s response to watching a friend of his mother take off all her clothes. Being young, his first and only thought is that she certainly now be cold. The woman disagrees, insisting she's "feeling devilishly hot!"
“St. Ives”
This four line wonder is another example of how Dahl deals with adult themes within the imagination of a child. The speaker meets a man from St. Ives who has seven wives, insisting without comment that it is more fun that being stuck with just one.
“The Crocodile”
The titular figure here is known as Crocky-Wock and the poem is all his story. Well, except for the six “juicy children” he has taken a habit of eating for lunch every Saturday. No sexist, he, Crocky-Wock makes sure to evenly divide between three boys and three girls. He has a preference for mustard on the boys, but the girls taste better with butterscotch and caramel.
“Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary”
Things begin sincerely enough with the opening couplet everybody has come to know and love about Mary. But when this Mary turns contrary, she means it, man! Her answer to the question about how her garden grows is a persnickety dismissal: how the heck she should know how her garden grows since she lives in a high-rise flat where she’s raising a little brat.
“The Tummy Beast”
Shades of Danny Torrance. But whereas “Tony” guides Danny’s “shining” from within, the little boy in this verse tells his mother that he has a person living in his tummy who demands food almost the minute he crawls into bed at night. The tummy beast guides this little one to steal cookies and generally make a glutton of himself. The mother, naturally enough, is led directly to the most obvious conclusion: surely her son is a little liar. And that settles that. Until the voice grows from inside her son’s stomach demanding eats because he’s hungry now! She faints.
“The Dentist and the Crocodile”
Ah, yes, your thoughts give you away. You are thinking that this is Crocky-Wock, the croc with a taste for Saturday lunches with the kids who has likely come to the dentist because one of the tots or brats has gotten stuck between his teeth, right? Well, unless something very strange and bizarre happened in the interim, this is not that crocodile. For that matter, it is really the dentist who is the main character here as he manifests a petrification of terror at the idea of working on the back teeth of the dangerously out of place reptile. His fear explodes into panic when a woman suddenly bursts into his office and veritably shrieks for her to beware the crocodile that is sure to kill them all. Turns out, however, that the crocodile is harmless. It is the woman’s pet, escaped from the gold chain she holds in hand.
“The Pig”
Not just any pig, mind you, but a very smart and very British swine. Clever? Why he knew how several tons of steel managed to defy gravity and transport passengers through the air. Still, an aptitude for machinery and math is of little consequence when trying to answer the really big questions…like the meaning of life. Inevitably, perhaps, the philosopher-pig finally arrives at answer, for his species anyway. The meaning of life is to become food for humans. Less than thrilled with this conclusion, he proceeds to turn the tables on Farmer Bland, bashing him over the head and, well, feasting upon him thoroughly. Because, after all, his worst fear was that the farmer had come to make of him lunch so turnabout is fair play, after all.
“Attention, please! Attention, Please!”
Those Oompa-Loompas; man, they can wrap a nice moral in a pretty package, can’t they? This particular bit of verse is not from the time that Charlie visited Willy Wonka’s factory, but the sequel in which he learns of the glass elevator. Dahl is handing out a real call to attention for parents: in this poem, the Oompa-Loompas spin the cautionary tale of Goldie Pinklesweet who took advantage of her granny’s trip to town to loot her medicine cabinet. Because nobody had ever warned her of the consequences, Goldie gobbles down sweet chocolately pill after sweet chocolately pill, little realizing that granny suffers from chronic constipation. The doctors pronounce Goldie dead, but she manages to magically resurrect herself from the abyss. It is not entirely a happy ending, however, for Goldie now spends seven hours a day—every day—in the bathroom.
“The Scorpion”
A child hears from her mother how lucky it is that England has no scorpions. Immediately, the verse switches to a description of a certain individual scorpion named Stingaling. His repulsive appearance is described with great figurative imagery: a murderous face, scaly skin blacker than black, and a crinkly tail that is at the heart of his repulsive qualities. Perhaps worst of all, Stingaling has just one object in mind: to swish that tail across the ample bottom of a human victim. The child, upon hearing this, is overcome with fright and the belief that something is crawling beneath the sheets, moving steadily from feet to knee to thigh to….and there the poem ends with the ghastly shrieking of the terrified victim of…something:
“It's on my bottom now!
"It's...Ow! Ow-ow! Ow-ow! OW-OW!"
