She confesses that she wishes she knew of some way to make her little Alfie grow into a larger, more dignified tortoise. One morning, Mrs Silver mentions to Mr Hoppy that even though she has owned Alfie for many years, he has only grown a tiny bit and has gained only 13 ounces in weight. Mrs Silver has a small pet tortoise, Alfie, who is the centre of her world. She lives in the flat below his, and he frequently leans over his balcony and exchanges polite conversations with Mrs Silver, but his courage fails him whenever he prepares to hint at his true feelings for her. For many years, he has had a secret love whose name was Mrs Silver.

Mr Hoppy is a shy elderly man who lives alone in an apartment, tending to his many plants, which have been the centre of his life since he retired from his job in a bus garage several years before. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. It's a short book but one of his better ones. It wasn't the best thing ever, but it was a funny little love story and I was amused reading it.

They just don't grab me, for all I do like Quentin Blake's illustrations. I generally don't really like Roald Dahl's books. Mrs Silver, so impressed by him, agrees to marry him and they all live happily ever after. I enjoyed the silliness and creativity Mr Hopper demonstrates in solving the problem. And then by actually buying all the tortoises available at a bunch of pet shops and replacing Alfie with a slightly bigger tortoise every week for eight weeks. Which he does with a backwards poem (because the language of tortoises is backwards - obviously - said night and day. When Mrs Silver says she desperately wants to see Alfie grow bigger, Mr Hopper is determined to make it happen. Mr Hopper is desperately in love with his neighbour Mrs Silver who spends all her time doting on her pet tortoise Alfie.

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