“Matilda was both [sensitive and brilliant], but above all she was brilliant. Her mind was so nimble and she was so quick to learn that her ability should have been obvious even to the most half-witted of parents. But Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood were both so gormless and so wrapped up in their own silly little lives that they failed to notice anything unusual about their daughter. To tell the truth, I doubt they would have noticed had she crawled into the house with a broken leg.”

Where many parents overstate their kids’ abilities, Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood seriously underrate their daughter, Matilda, who in fact is a genius. Matilda needs and deserves loving, caring parents who want to help her develop her brilliant mind. Instead, she gets parents who care only about themselves and consider her a nuisance.

“Over the next six months, under Mrs. Phelps’s watchful and compassionate eye, Matilda read the following books:

Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Gone to Earth by Mary Webb

Kim by Rudyard Kipling

The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Good Companions by J. B. Priestley

Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

Animal Farm by George Orwell”

Matilda’s reading list would challenge an adult, much less an avid five-year-old. Her mind, already brilliant, grows rapidly as she reads classic novels. This kid is going somewhere despite her useless parents. Matilda also uses these books as an imaginative escape from her parents’ dullness and cruelty.

“She resented being told constantly that she was ignorant and stupid when she knew she wasn’t. The anger inside her went on boiling and boiling, and as she lay in bed that night she made a decision. She decided that every time her father or her mother was beastly to her, she would get her own back in some way or another. A small victory or two would help her to tolerate their idiocies and would stop her from going crazy.”

Ignored or hushed by her greedy, dishonest parents, Matilda calms herself by deciding to get revenge. Much smarter than her family, the little girl is clever enough to get away with it. The most important thing she knows, though, is that she is smart, despite her parents’ foolish opinion of her.