Today, apparently, is Roald Dahl Day (were he alive it would be his 96th birthday). Here's Michael Irwin in the LRB on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (from a review of George's Marvellous Medicine, 1 October 1981): There are several things that Roald Dahl has got emphatically right, the most important being his appreciation of the passion children feel for sweets in general and perhaps for chocolate in particular. For pre-pubertal Westerners, sweets fill the vacuum later to be occupied by sex. It is unnerving to watch an otherwise decent child being temporarily demoralised (in the literal sense of being morally corrupted) by a desire for sweets as an otherwise decent adult may be by sexual need.