The Twits

"The Roly-Poly Bird" is a fictional character, that, like the Vermicious knids and Muggle-Wump the monkey is made reference to in more than one... child's book by Roald Dahl- in two cases alongside Muggle-Wump. He is described as large, with fantastically coloured tailfeathers, and in Quentin Blake's illustrations has a blue body, a long neck and a crest on his head - rather like a peacock. He is known to have made his nest in an orange tree at least once and his favourite foods are berries. He can speak in at least two languages, Zulu and English, and seems to have intelligence at least equal to that of a monkey. In all three of his appearances, he is a sign of light relief to the reader. The Enormous Crocodile In this story the Roly-Poly Bird is a minor but important character to the overall tale. It is only in this story that we see him in his native land. The Crocodile of the story boasts to many characters that he is venturing into the nearby village to eat human children; but the Roly-Poly Bird is the only one that he does not permit to warn him against it before rearing up and snapping at him - pulling out some of his tailfeathers in the process.
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Children's literature as such probably started in the 17th century; it is generally believed that before then books were written mainly for adults.... Additionally, most printed works were hard to come by due to their cost and were mostly available for purchase only by upper class society. Scholarship on children's literature includes professional organizations, dedicated publications and university courses. There is some debate on what constitutes children's literature. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child defines a child as "a human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier". Some books written for children, such as The Young Visiters by Daisy Ashford or the juvenilia of Jane Austen, written to amuse brothers and sisters, are also written by children. Anne Frank wrote a novel and many very short stories in addition to her diary . Barbara Newhall Follett wrote four books, beginning with a novel called The House Without Windows at the age of nine; when the manuscript was destroyed in a fire, she rewrote it from memory.
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