So in terms of the possibilities, there’s… a lot.” There’s an Oompa Loompa song for every name in the world. Plus in the Family Tree, your surname adds to the mix. “The rooms you visit are dictated by the number of letters in your name, and in every room there’s 26 possible outcomes, one for each letter.
How this is personalised for every child is pretty mind-boggling, and Katy Balfour, story producer at the company (and former associate director at Punchdrunk) tells me the possible iterations go into the millions. Near the end of the story, you’re also presented with a customised chocolate bar tailored to your name. And in the Fizzical Effects Machine, you are subject to an experiment that leaves you “all elastic”. Later, you come across a block of rock candy that is “outrageously oozing”. Along the way, aspects of the story are adapted to the letters J, O and E – for example in the Great Flavour Fairground, you play a slot machine where you win a Juicy Jello, with an accompanying illustration of wobbling jellies. It begins with you, Joe, receiving a golden ticket and making your way to the factory as Charlie did, for a tour around its incredible, wondrous and bizarre rooms and inventions. “So writing it from the child’s perspective meant it wasn’t trying to recreate Dahl’s way with words.”Īs with Lost My Name, the story is personalised to the owner’s name. “It was important it didn’t try to emulate Roald Dahl, but complement the original works as a companion piece,” David explains. The concept for the new book was to revisit the setting for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, exploring the factory in first person through a journal or scrap book. “It struck a chord with the Wonka World,” says Wonderbly’s founding partner, David Cadji-Newby, whose background is in comedy writing for the BBC. This inventive approach to publishing clearly resonated with the Roald Dahl Estate.
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