The dissertation is the first comprehensive analysis of Roald Dahl's works through the prism of the children's reception.
The peculiarities of the child-reader perception as different from the adult's (meant as experienced) reader are studied in the work. In this regard, the reception theory was characterized and special aspects of its application in the understanding of children's literature and children's reception were clarified.
The study focuses on the demonstration of the child-reader category as an integral part of the analysis of the receptive poetics of works for children. The emphasis on the use of terms – “the reader as player”, “the reader as hero and heroine”, “the reader as thinker” (J.A. Appleyard) – was done for the first time. The following concepts are taken into account: psychic, socio-cultural, ethnic, historical and age characteristics rather than age-limits.
The framework “author – text – reader” is examined in the scope of child's reception. The paradigms “author – reader” and “text – reader” are analysed in terms of their interrelation.
The dissertation also performs the analysis of the students' works as samples of readers' response. The texts are written by the pupils from Donetsk region. Due to these texts the necessity of using this subdivision (the reader as player, the reader as hero and heroine, the reader as thinker) is proved.
Receptive poetics of the stories by R. Dahl is studied through the analysis of themes and subjects in his texts, image system, text strategies, the concepts that help to understand the implied child-reader's reception of the writer's works. Common features of the author's stories and novels are folk motif, game motif, his unique humor and grotesque techniques, a few adult characters in the works.
The author's creative construction of the initiation process of the main character, who reader as hero can usually identify himself with, can be considered as a key element of the children's novel “James and the Giant Peach”. The game motif is one of the main text strategies in the story “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and is also significant in the novels “James and the Giant Peach” and “Charlie and Great Glass Elevator”. Humor and grotesque techniques as elements of reader response play a vital role in “The Twits” and “George's Marvelous Medicine”.
Another important factor that determines the reader's reception in R. Dahl's texts is the specific nature of image system, the key role of which is to influence the reader the way that he can easily compare his life with the life described/ written in the text. It is obvious in the following works: “BFG”, “The Witches”, “Matilda”.
A special significance in the study of child-reader reception is the subsystem of animals presented in the stories “The Magic Finger”, “The Fantastic Mr. Fox”, “The Giraffe, Pelly and me”. “Esio Trot”. Some topics described in the texts – theft, poaching, human destruction of nature – can be considered as not childish from the first sight, but due to skillful interpretation of animal images and due to entertaining elements that draw child's attention, the author can “convince” the child-reader to protect the nature and impose some moral values.
In all Dahl's works the attention to the implied reader is evident, but the most significant it is in the novel “Danny, the champion of the World”. There is a clear emphasis on the young hero, who demonstrates an important feature typical to an adult – a willingness to take responsibility for themselves and their families.
Thus, in the dissertation research a thorough analysis of the receptive poetics of children's texts by R. Dahl is practiced. The key theoretical aspects that enable to characterize the peculiarities of child-reader reception are described. The significant elements of R. Dahl's works are view of a child-reader image, text strategies that affect and direct the reader to self analysis, to critical thinking, cause the evolution of a child reader – from reader as hero and heroine to reader as thinker. The results of the study allow us to claim the priority and good perspectives of the scientific study of R. Dahl's work as well as children's literature in general.
