Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

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Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator is a children's book by British author Roald Dahl. It is the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, continuing the story of young Charlie Bucket and eccentric candymaker Willy Wonka as they travel through Space in the Great Glass Elevator.

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator was first published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1972, and in the UK by George Allen & Unwin in 1973. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was written by Roald Dahl in 1964.

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Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The book continues directly from the events of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Willy Wonka has just given Charlie ownership of his factory, and in a flying contraption known as the Great Glass Elevator they crash through the roof of Charlie's house and inform his family of the good news.

Charlie's grandparents -- George and Georgina on his father's side, and Josephine on his mother's (Grandpa Joe is already with Charlie in the Great Glass Elevator) -- are nervous about going inside the travelling elevator, and after twenty years in bed, refuse to get up. The bed is thus pushed into the elevator, which then takes off. At a critical moment during the return trip to the factory, a panicking Georgina grabs Wonka away from the controls and strands the elevator with its occupants in Earth's orbit. The elevator circles the planet until Wonka sees the chance to link it with the newly-launched Space Hotel, a private enterprise of the United States government.

In the White House, President of the United States Lancelot R. Gilligrass and his Cabinet see this mysterious object dock with the Space Hotel and think it's hostile. The approaching space shuttle containing the hotel staff and three astronauts is being left behind by the mysterious object, and the shuttle's crew prepares for the worst. On the Hotel, Wonka and the others hear the President address them as Martians, and Wonka proceeds to string Gilligrass along. But in the midst of this, the hotel's elevators open, revealing five brown-green wriggly creatures shaped something like eggs with eyes. They change shape, each forming a letter of the word SCRAM, and Wonka motions everybody to get out quick.

Those shape-changers, Wonka tells the others, are predatory extraterrestrials called Vermicious Knids that have infested the Space Hotel. Since they can't reach Earth's surface because they burn up in the atmosphere as shooting stars, the Knids are waiting in the Space Hotel for the new arrivals in the shuttle, many of whom they instantly devour. In addition, they disable the shuttle's rockets so the survivors can't return to Earth.

Charlie suggests that they use the Elevator to tow the shuttle in. They successfully attach a steel "Knid-proof" cable to the shuttle, but as this happens, one especially large Knid ties itself around the elevator and forms a chain with its fellows, intending to drag all the humans into deep space. In a burst of inspiration, Wonka activates the Elevator's retro-rockets and brings them, the shuttle, and the tied-down and now-frying Knids into the atmosphere. Releasing the shuttle, Wonka redirects the Elevator to re-enter the chocolate factory at the same point they left.

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Since Charlie was presented the factory as a gift by Wonka, he wants his family to help him run it. But George, Georgina, and Josephine still refuse to move out of their bed. Wonka proposes a pill he invented, Wonka-Vite, to make them young again. (He says that it is too valuable to waste on himself, which is why he needed an heir in the first place.) However, the three bedridden recipients get greedy and take much more than they need to. Instead of becoming a mere twenty years younger, the three grandparents lose eighty years, making George one year old, Josephine three months, and Georgina disappears altogether, having become "minus two" (she was seventy-eight). Charlie and Wonka make the journey in the Great Glass Elevator to Minusland to get Georgina back with Vita-Wonk, a sprayable compound that makes people older. Minusland is a dark, gloomy region far beneath the surface of the Earth, filled up entirely with fog, and inhabited only by the invisible and highly dangerous Gnoolies. After administering an even worse overdose of Vita-Wonk to Grandma Georgina, they figure out how much Wonka-Vite they must give her to get her back to her correct age.

The grandparents, finally restored to their proper ages, are still incensed with Wonka's adventurous nature. The Oompa-Loompas then come in and give Wonka a letter from the President, congratulating the occupants of the Great Glass Elevator on saving the lives of the shuttle astronauts and hotel staff and inviting them as the guests of honour to a White House dinner. The grandparents don't want to be left out, so they leap out of bed and join Charlie, Grandpa Joe, Wonka, and Charlie's parents to enter the helicopter sent to pick them up.

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