Last stop, flushbunkingly gloriumptious Great Missenden!

No, I haven't completely lost it, yet. Great Missenden was the home of Roald Dahl, and now is proud of its Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre! Dahl has become one of Sophia's favorite authors, so this was a special treat for her. We recently read The BFG together, and The Big Friendly Giant is the character that spoke with his own word inventions, such as flushbunkingly.

There were several rooms in the museum for learning about Dahl's life. There were exhibits with facts about Dahl's life, photographs of his family, clothes that you could dress-up in to look like Dahl in his school uniform, a place to make paper seagulls like in James and the Giant Peach, and story sacks, in which you reached in and pulled out a prop or item that somehow related to one of his stories. There were also stampers of his characters, which the girls used to decorate their Roald Dahl Storybooks that they were given.

An interesting fact that we loved to discover is that he had a daughter named Tessa! Actually, she was born Chantal Sophia Dahl, but Roald changed her name a few months later when he realized that Chantal rhymes with Dahl! So she became Tessa Sophia Dahl!In the Story Centre, we were able to cut up magazine pictures of faces to create a new face, which was how Dahl imagined some of his characters. The girls also created their own silly words and Sophia worte hers in her Storybook, along with a description of its meaning. Tessa dressed up as several of the characters and they both took a turn sitting in Dahls's chair, which is set up to look like the writing hut that he sat in to write his books. They were also able to color and decorate an animal character and we were able to hear and be a part of a story telling. The girls loved adding ideas to the story and I don't think Sophia took much notice that the storyteller accentuated the beginning of the word zeeebra, when she suggested it. Here in England, they say zebra with a short e sound and I thought it sounded like he was poking fun at her, but luckily she let it slide.
They also had a place to get lunch, The Twit Cafe, which had some yummy sandwitches. After eating and checking out the gift shop, we looked around Great Missenden a little more, then drove through Amersham on our way back to the highway, and home.

We had to eat in the Children Eating Room...though we decided against eating children.

Some extra pictures...

A nice door in Great MissendenA shop that I liked in AmershamA building I liked

A view I liked