The BFG

The BFG (short for "Big Friendly Giant") is a 1982 children's book written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake. It is an expansion of a short story from Dahl's 1975 book Danny, the Champion of the World. The book is dedicated to Dahl's late daughter, Olivia, who died of measles encephalitis at age seven in 1962.

An animated television adaptation was released in 1989 with David Jason providing the voice of the BFG and Amanda Root as the voice of Sophie. It has also been adapted as a theatre performance. A live-action adaptation directed by Steven Spielberg is currently in production with a release date of July 2016.

Characters

The Friendly Giant

The Friendly Giant is a popular Canadian children's television program that aired on CBC Television from September 30, 1958 through to March 1985. It featured three main characters: a giant named Friendly (played by Bob Homme), who lived in a huge castle, along with his puppet animal friends Rusty (a rooster who played a harp and lived in a book bag hung by the castle window) and Jerome (a giraffe). The two principal puppets were manipulated and voiced by Rod Coneybeare.

Beginnings

The program started in 1953 on Madison, Wisconsin radio station WHA-AM, a station owned by the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Shortly thereafter, the show was moved to its sister television station, WHA-TV. Kinescopes of these shows were distributed to a few other non-commercial stations, and some of them made it to the CBC headquarters in Toronto. At the invitation of Fred Rainsberry, the head of Children's Television at the CBC, in 1958 Bob Homme moved the show to Canada, where it became a staple show for several generations of young viewers. In the United States, National Educational Television carried both WHA and CBC versions from 1953 until 1970, when NET ceded the network to the Public Broadcasting Service.