Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a 1964 children’s novel by British author Roald Dahl. The story features the adventures of young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka. The book has been adapted into two movies, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005). The Thammasat University Library owns copies of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in English and Thai language versions. The original English language version is shelved in the Fiction Stacks of the Puey Ungphakorn Library, Rangsit campus. Copies of the Thai language version, translated by Salinee Khamchan, are available at the Boonchoo Treethong Library, Lampang campus, the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha prachan campus, and the  Puey Ungphakorn Library, Rangsit campus. Also in the Pridi Banomyong Library collection is Translation analysis “Charlie and the chocolate factory” by Suyada Kulpradit, a master’s degree thesis presented at the Thammasat University Language Institute in 2006

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a popular choice for reading aloud in schoolrooms around the world. Despite its popularity, some authors have expressed concern about it.  Eleanor Cameron, whose own novels may be borrowed through the TU Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service wrote in October 1972 in The Horn Book Magazine, citing the American author Eudora Welty:

…not only in the power of place in any created work but in the ways in which place exerts control over character portrayal, of how exceedingly important is explicitness of detail and a steady lucidity and uncompromise of purpose. She speaks further of how place has deeply to do with three kinds of goodness in fiction: the goodness and validity of the raw material, the goodness of the writing, and the goodness of the writer himself, his worth as a human being. And this worth is always mercilessly revealed in his writing, because there we discover his roots or lack of them, the place where he stands, his point of view or lack of it.

[…] Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is like candy (the chief excitement and lure of Charlie) in that it is delectable and soothing while we are undergoing the brief sensory pleasure it affords but leaves us poorly nourished with our taste dulled for better fare. I think it will be admitted of the average TV show that goes on from week to week that there is no time, either from the point of view of production or the time allowed for showing, to work deeply at meaning or characterisation. All interest depends upon the constant, unremitting excitement of the turns of plot. And if character or likelihood of action – that is, inevitability – must be wrenched to fit the necessities of plot, there is no time to be concerned about this either by the director or by the audience. Nor will the tuned-in, turned-on, keyed-up television watcher give the superficial quality of the show so much as a second thought. He has been temporarily amused; what is there to complain about?

Another distinguished American writer, Ursula K. Le Guin, whose works are in the collection of the TU Library, agreed, in a letter to the editor published in the same magazine in April 1973:

Eleanor Cameron’s remarks on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the Horn Book may draw some fire upon her; it’s always perilous to do anything to a best-seller but adulate it. My response to her October article is one of relief and hearty thanks. It is good to have an accurate diagnosis of one’s vague feelings of unease, and to find that somebody else – especially a gentle and perceptive critic – has been feeling a bit queasy too. That Mr Dahl’s books have a very powerful effect on children is evident. Kids between 8 and 11 seem to be truly fascinated by them; one of mine used to finish Charlie and then start it right over from the beginning (she was subject to these fits for about two months at age 11). She was like one possessed while reading it, and for a while after reading she was, for a usually amiable child, quite nasty. Apparently the books, with their wish-fulfilment, their slam-bang action, and their ethical crassness, provide a genuine escape experience, a tiny psychological fugue, very like that provided by comic books.

Dahl was not pleased to be criticized, and wrote to the magazine that no children today would want to have older books read to them, even classics such as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, or Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Both of these novels are in the TU Library collection, so students may decide for themselves whether they are still worth reading.

Thailand and chocolate

Whether or not all readers enjoy Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, almost everyone does appreciate chocolate.

Associate Professor Sanh La-ongsri, Ph.D., a specialist in pomology, or the science of growing fruit, teaches in the Department of Horticulture of the Faculty of Agricultural Production, Maejo University, Bang Khen Alley, Amphoe San Sai, Chang Wat Chiang Mai.

Ajarn Sanh is an expert on beverage crops such as cocoa, tea, coffee, and pioneered in growing cocoa in Thailand. His MarkRin Cocoa Farm in Chiang Mai produces beans that are made into chocolate by a local company, Siamaya Chocolate.

As the Siamaya Chocolate website explains,

Siamaya Chocolate started out as a dream to bring good chocolate to the Thai market, while giving back to the community. Siamaya Chocolate was founded on the idea, that Thailand needed quality chocolate. There is plenty of cheap, mass produced chocolate in the grocery shops, but we always felt that someone should be able to do it better. Upon a chance meeting with agricultural professor Sahn from Maejo university in Chiang Mai, we realised that our dream could come true. Dr. Sahn has been teaching farmers in Chiang Mai valley how to grow cocoa beans, and in this processed cultivated a high-quality hybrid cocoa bean, that is now the cornerstone of the cocoa beans from Chiang Mai.

In December 2017, Chiang Mai City Life magazine noted that as climate change affects the world’s leading cocoa-producing continent of Africa, there may be more room in the near future for Asian chocolate producers. Currently Indonesia is the leading cocoa producer in Asia, although Thailand also has a bright future with this product. Siamaya Chocolate is available at the Nana Jungle Market in Chiang Mai and other local markets. Students interested in the subject of the nutritional and industrial aspects of chocolate may find useful books on the subject in the TU Library.

Thailand’s MarkRin Chocolate is slowly gaining international;l fame, and was represented last year at the Salon du Chocolat 2018 in Paris, France. Internationa;l connoisseurs learned about Thailand as a producer of cocoa beans and Thai chocolate companies as well.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)