Ever since “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” was first published back in 1964, people have dreamed of visiting the Wonka Works. Make their way past those fabled gates and then … Well, maybe go for a sail down that chocolate river aboard the Wonkatania.
Or – better yet – visit some of the rooms at that factory which Roald Dahl mentioned in his text but that readers then never got to explore. I mean, what sort of machinery is actually inside of the Juicing Room (i.e., where the Oompa-Loompas took Violet Beauregarde after she chewed that piece of gum which isn’t ready for human consumption yet and then wound up as a giant blueberry)?
Well, thanks to “My Golden Ticket: A Journey into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory,” you can now do what Charlie Bucket did. Wander that factory floor. Peek behind all of those closed doors. Have a literary adventure that – thanks to the state-of-the-art personalization technology which powers the creation of this volume – will be different for every single person who orders this book.
An inspired collaboration between the Roald Dahl Literary Estate and Wonderbly (that Google-backed personalized startup), “My Golden Ticket” not only allows the reader to revisit some of the candy rooms that were described in the original “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” book (and were subsequently visualized for the two films that followed), it also takes them to rooms that Roald only mentioned in passing. Better yet, visit sections of the factory that Wonka fans didn’t even know existed before that were taken directly from Dahl’s original notes for this much-beloved book.
“It has been an amazing privilege to work with the Roald Dahl Literary Estate to bring to life and re-open the gates of one of the most iconically imaginative worlds in children’s literary history,” said Asi Sharabi, the CEO of Wonderbly. “Our two teams here worked closely to strike just the right balance here: Creating a book that captures the spirit of Roald Dahl’s original tale, while – at the same time – crafting a story that expands & enriches what people already knew about Willy Wonka’s factory that also allows plenty of opportunity for personalization.”
And how exactly does Wonderbly go about personalizing each reader’s journey through “My Golden Ticket?” Just like that mysterious chocolatier, this innovative children’s book publisher has its secrets. But what can be revealed is that “A Journey Through Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory” – as it goes through its personalization production process – then makes use of an algorithm that keys off of the placement of letters in each child’s name.
Take – for example – what happens during this tour after each child eats a sweet that comes out tumbling out of Wonka’s Fizzical Effects Machine. This particular spread in “My Golden Ticket” makes use of whatever the fourth letter in your child’s name is. So if your daughter’s name is Sofia, that character in the book then becomes invisible. Or if your son’s name is Charlie, that character then becomes rubbery in this story.
This sort of super-specific personalization continues as each Golden Ticket holder explores the factory. In the Toffee Apple Orchard, each child will discover a Dahl-ified version of their family tree that then keys off of what their individual surname is. In the Rainbow Drop Room, as the reader makes a rainbow, something goes wrong. And then everything turns a color that’s dictated by the second letter of this child’s name (EX: Sofia = Orange, Alan = Lavender, etc).
Adding to the fun of “A Journey Through Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory” are all the great illustrations that Adam Hancher has created for this project. Using classic candy & chocolate ads from the 1950s, 1960s & 1970s as his jumping-off point, Adam filled this 36-to-40-page volume with dozens of witty drawings & paintings that perfectly capture the look of what a modern-day Wonka Works might be like.
The end result is – to borrow a phrase from the song that Leslie Bricusse & Anthony Newley wrote for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory – is a product of “Pure Imagination.” A beautifully illustrated book very much in the original Roald Dahl style where – thanks to the algorithms that power Wonderbly’s personalization technology – no two readers will ever have the exact same adventure.
So if you’d like your child to receive the Veruca Salt treatment (i.e., finding out what their own personalized Oompa-Loompa song would be like) without then being tossed down a garage chute by judgmental squirrels, why not wander over to the Wonderbly website and learn a bit more about “My Golden Ticket: A Journey into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory” ?