Matilda won the Children’s Book Award shortly after it was published in 1988, and it has continued to delight audiences ever since. Early drafts of the story were very different to the one we now know. At first, Matilda was a wicked girl who eventually used her powers to help her teacher solve her financial problems – by fixing a horse race. In the end, though, it became the magical story now known to children the world over.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is perhaps Roald Dahl’s best-known story. The story of Charlie Bucket, the five Golden Tickets, the Oompa-Loompas and the amazing Mr. Willy Wonka has become firmly embedded in our minds since it was first published in 1964. Conservative estimates suggest the original book has sold over 20 million copies worldwide; it is now available in 55 languages.

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator is the sequel to one of the best-loved stories in children’s literature. Published eight years after Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 1972, it continues the story of Charlie Bucket, his family and the amazing Mr. Willy Wonka. At first, Roald Dahl thought the word ‘elevator’ was too American, but the British word ‘lift’ seemed too boring. ‘Air machine’ was considered, but ‘elevator’ came out top in the end.

As a young man, Roald Dahl lived in Africa. Not only did he have to avoid hungry crocodiles, but also marauding monkeys and deadly snakes. These experiences remained with him, and he remembered them when he came to write The Enormous Crocodile many years later. It was the first book Roald wrote for younger children, and it was also the first of his stories to be illustrated by Quentin Blake – marking the beginning of a now legendary partnership.

Published in 1970, the story of Mr Fox and his feud with the farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean has gone on to inspire many other artists, including a 1998 operatic version of the story composed by Tobias Picker to a libretto by Donald Sturrock, and a critically acclaimed stop-motion film directed by Wes Anderson featuring the voices of George Clooney and Meryl Streep.

In George’s Marvellous Medicine, published in 1981, George Kranky’s Grandma may not anticipate the results of the medicine fed to her by her grandson, but like George, Roald Dahl also had fun mixing marvellous concoctions. He called them witches potions and delivered them to his children just before bedtime. They included ingredients like tinned peaches blended with milk and either pink, blue or green food colouring. His were put together carefully, though – none of the nasty side effects George’s Grandma experienced.

James and the Giant Peach was Roald Dahl’s first classic novel for children. Although The Gremlins is sometimes referred to as an earlier example of his writing for children, James was Roald’s first conscious attempt to write for a younger audience after several years of writing primarily adult short stories. It was first published in 1961 to glowing reviews and marked the beginning of his prolific career as a children’s author.

Roald Dahl began work on The Magic Finger in 1962. In the story, an unnamed eight-year-old girl tells the story of her neighbours, the Gregg family. The Greggs like to hunt, but the girl can’t stand to see animals killed just for fun. Her sense of injustice makes her angry and through her anger she develops a special power – not dissimilar to another of Roald’s young female protagonist, Matilda Wormwood.

The BFG was written in 1982. The idea for the story had begun several years before, with a sentence scribbled in one of Roald Dahl’s Ideas Books – exercise books he used to write down some of the thoughts that came to him and were sometimes later turned into stories. And of all his stories, Roald Dahl said that The BFG was probably his own favourite.

The Twits, first published in 1980, may be about a pair of horrible twits, but it also features one of the most-quoted phrases in all of Roald’s books, “If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.” Fun fact: Even in real life Roald Dahl was very suspicious of men with beards. He thought they must be hiding something sinister.

The Witches tells the story of a brave young boy and his Norwegian grandmother as they battle against England’s child-hating witches. When he was a child himself, Roald Dahl used to spend every summer holiday with his family in Norway, where he was inspired by bedtime stories of witches and magic. It is also said that the grandmother in The Witches was partially inspired by Roald’s own mother. Roald dedicated the book to his wife, Liccy.

The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me is another of Roald’s books for younger readers. It started out with three characters, but no story. Quentin Blake liked the idea of a giraffe, as he’d never drawn one before. He also knew he could have fun with a pelican’s beak. And Roald Dahl loved the monkey previously drawn by Quentin for The Enormous Crocodile, so insisted he was included too.

(Related: 7 Ways To Encourage Your Child To Read More)