THE SWAN AND THE HITCH-HIKER by Roald Dahl

"The Swan" is a short story by Roald Dahl. It tells the story of Ernie, a teenager who receives a rifle for his birthday, and his friend Raymond. Ernie and Raymond go hunting in the countryside with the new gun. There they encounter Peter Watson, a 13-year-old whom the two boys often bully in school. Ernie and Raymond want to kill a swan sitting on her nest. Peter defends the bird and ...

In "The hitch-hiker", the narrator is driving a brand new BMW car, when he picks up a hitch-hiker. The hitch-hiker says that he is going to Epsom for the races because it is Derby Day. The hitch-hiker does not reveal why he was going there but says that he is not going to bet on horses.

Here is the audio material of the reading book:
The Swan and the Hitch-hiker


Worksheets to print:  12th December

               

Test:     15th December


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Roald Dahl was born on 13th September, 1916 in Llandaff, South Wales. Dahl's parents were Norwegian. His father died while Roald was still a child.

He did not enjoy the school because many of the teachers were cruel and often caned the students. Dahl was good at cricket and swimming, but he performed poorly in class. One of his main hobbies was reading, and some of his favourite novelists were the adventure writers Rudyard Kipling and H. Rider Haggard.

However, there was one good thing about the school. Every few months, the chocolate company, Cadburys, sent boxes of chocolates for the students to test. This happy memory gave Dahl the idea for his most famous novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

After school, Dahl decided that he wanted to travel. He got a job with the Shell Oil Company and two years later was sent to East Africa. In his autobiography, Going Solo, he recounts some of the exciting adventures there, including the time a black mamba entered his friend's house and a snake catcher had to be called in.

In 1939, World War 11 started. Dahl joined the RAF (Royal Air Force) and learned to fly warplanes. Unfortunately, on his first flight into enemy territory he ran out of fuel and crashed in the Libyan desert. He fractured his skull but managed to crawl out of the burning plane.

Dahl started writing in the 1940s while based in the USA. His first story was a newspaper account of his air crash. In 1945 he moved back home but in the early fifties returned to America, where he met his first wife, the actress Patricia Neal. They had five children together but got divorced in 1983. Dahl remarried soon after. The last years of his life were very happy and he wrote some of his best books during this period: The BFG, The Witches and Matilda. Roald Dahl died on 23rd November 1990 in Oxford, England.