On... Fantastic Mr. Fox and George's Marvelous Medicine by Roald Dahl

I've found myself reading many children's books that I never found an interest in as a child. Among these books are the any books of Roald Dahl (famous for his Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).

These two books... written for an upper elementary school level... intrigued me. First, even though everything works out in the end... the manner of getting to that end is rather... shall we say interesting.

First in Fantastic Mr. Fox, a show off Father Fox ends up getting his tail shot off by three farmers who have had enough of his stealing. Of course, these farmers are disliked by the entire town: human and animal, so all of Mr. Fox's actions are justified. When forced to dig deeper and deeper into the ground to avoid the heavy duty equipment of the farmers Mr. Fox creates an ingenious Robbin Hood like plan to steal from the rich (in this case, the farmers) in order to share with the poor (other digging animals that have found themselves unable to leave their homes because of the farmer's vigil above ground. The book finishes with a huge feast being put on while the farmers wait and continue to wait above ground while these animals continue to steal from them. Hmm... I'm not sure what I think about the purpose of the story but I must say that it is very cleverly written.

Second, in George's Marvelous Medicine, a poor young boy must spend his Saturday morning catering to the every whim of his nagging, rather evil looking and speaking grandmother who takes a disgusting medicine four times a day. In order to give her some "real" medicine George concocts a potion using just about everything in the house from toothpaste to laundary soap to antifreeze and shoe polish. The resulting potion gives Grandma a real height boost and way more energy than she'd ever had but does nothing to change her attitude. When George's father finds out he immediately wants to create more of this potion so that he can make all of his farm animals as large as the chicken which also imbibed of the first batch. Things don't work out so well in the next three successive batches culminating in a potion that shrinks the drinker. The grandmother discovers, drinks and ends up becoming so small that she disappears entirely. Thus ends the story.
I finished that book with a puzzled look as well. What is a child supposed to learn from this book?
Again, I must say that the book was written very well though.