The BFG Summary

Our story begins during the Witching Hour, a time of night when humans are asleep and creatures from the shadows get to roam the world. Probably not the best time to poke around (if you’re a human), but that’s what a little girl named Sophie is up to. She peeks out the window of her bedroom, which is in an orphanage, and sees a giant blowing what looks like a trumpet into the window across the street. She runs back into her bed, but guess what? It’s too late.

The giant sticks his hand into her window, lifts her up, and carries her to a different world. Not your average middle-of-the-night experience.

When he puts her down, she’s on the giant table in a cave. She begs the giant not to eat her, and after the giant gets sidetracked, talking about the many ways giants like to eat humans, he reveals that he is the Big Friendly Giant. In other words, he’s the only giant who doesn’t do that kind of thing.

Way to kill the tension, BFG.

So if he wasn’t looking for a snack, why did the Big Friendly Giant kidnap Sophie? Simple enough: because she saw him. He’s pretty scared of the human world finding out about giants and putting him in a zoo. And he has a point: that’s probably just what would happen. He tells Sophie she’ll have to live with him forever, so that she’ll never tell the world about giants. Forever’s no big deal, right?

Surprisingly, Sophie isn’t too into that idea. On the other hand, since she’s from a terrible orphanage, she’s not in a big hurry to return, either.

She’s also curious about the BFG. So she keeps her cool and asks him a bunch of questions. Like how the BFG found her when she was hiding in bed. The BFG says he heard her heart beating. His giant ears, it turns out, are not just for comic effect. He can hear ladybugs walking and ants talking to each other. You’d think that would be distracting when he’s having a conversation, but it seems to work out okay.

Oh, and his other secret: he’s a dream-blowing giant. Every night, he uses his trumpet to blow good dreams into children’s bedrooms.

Pretty cool guy, as it turns out.

The BFG is hungry, so he eats some of a bumpy, spiky vegetable called a snozzcumber. The BFG is not a snozzcumber fan, but it’s the only vegetable that grows in Giant Country, and he doesn’t believe in stealing food from humans.

Sophie tries a piece of snozzcumber, too. And spits it right back out. Guess snozzcumber is about as tasty as regular cucumber.

But it turns out to be a good thing the snozzcumber pieces are on the table, because they’re a perfect place to hide when another giant with the sweet, winning name of the Bloodbottler stomps into the cave. The Bloodbottler heard the BFG talking and thinks he captured a human for a pet. How’d he figure that one out? He starts looking around the cave for Sophie so he can eat her.

Sophie manages to scoop seeds out of a larger snozzcumber piece and hides directly inside it. But the BFG doesn’t know that, and tries to convince the Bloodbottler to eat a snozzcumber. His thinking: maybe the grossness of the snozzcumber will drive the Bloodbottler out of the cave.

The result? The Bloodbottler takes a bite with Sophie in it, but luckily, the snozzcumber is so gross that he spits her out. Then, as predicted, he runs from the cave.

The BFG and Sophie relieve their stress by drinking frobscottle—in other words, soda for giants that makes you fart. (It’s okay—“whizzpopping” is considered polite in giant culture.)

As a post-whizzpopping treat, the BFG takes Sophie to Dream Country, a misty land where he catches dreams for his collection. He gets a good one but also accidentally bottles a “trogglehumper,” meaning nightmare. See what we mean about language being a little kooky?

The BFG doesn’t want to release the trogglehumper where it could float into any human’s mind, so he blows it at a sleeping giant named the Fleshlumpeater. To the BFG and Sophie’s delight, the Fleshlumpeater kicks so much in his dream that all the giants get into a fight.

The BFG takes Sophie back to his cave to show her his dream collection, but soon, the giants are running past the cave. It’s people-eating time. They shout to the BFG that they’re going to England to eat schoolchildren. This, for obvious reasons, upsets Sophie.

Sophie thinks they should go to the Queen of England and ask her to stop the giants, which is a perfectly logical solution for a British citizen under the age of ten to think of. But the BFG thinks she won’t believe them. Which, sorry to say, folks, is probably more accurate as far as royalty is concerned.

So Sophie comes up with a plan. She asks the BFG to mix a dream for the Queen that shows the boys and girls getting eaten and also shows Sophie and the BFG ready to help. Then the BFG will put Sophie down in the Queen’s room, so the Queen will see her when she wakes up and know that her dream is real.

It’s a long shot, but the BFG goes for it. (Mostly because of the prospect of not having to eat snozzcumbers ever again.) He mixes the dream and carries Sophie to the palace in his ear. Sophie directs him to the Queen’s back garden, and the BFG blows the dream and sets Sophie on the windowsill of the Queen’s bedroom.

The Queen wakes up in a panic, and then her maid panics when the Queen tells her that she dreamed about boarding school children being eaten. The missing boarding school children made front-page news that morning.

Then they find Sophie in the window, and the maid almost loses her mind. The Queen stays remarkably calm (that’s what Queens do, after all). She even keeps her cool when Sophie calls the BFG to their window. She simply invites them both to breakfast.

Classy.

The butler, Mr. Tibbs, faces the intimidating task of prepping to have a giant dine in the ballroom. He makes a table out of a ping pong table and grandfather clocks, and a chair from a piano and chest of drawers. He runs into trouble when the BFG gobbles all his food in one bite, but he keeps his cool (and keeps the chef busy). Way to improvise, royal staff.

The three sit down to dine, Sophie wearing a borrowed former princess’s dress and the Queen’s sapphire brooch. The BFG and Sophie tell the Queen about the giants. After calling the King of Sweden and the Sultan of Baghdad to confirm their story about who’s been eaten in the past few nights, the Queen calls the Heads of the Army and the Air Force.

The Heads want to bomb the giants, but the Queen doesn’t believe in killing anyone. So the BFG has the army and air force follow him to Giant Country in the afternoon, when the giants are asleep. The men tie the giants up. But it can’t all be that simple: they have trouble tying the Fleshlumpeater, and he wakes up.

He lifts up a soldier and is about to eat him, but Sophie saves the day by jabbing the Queen’s brooch into his foot. The Fleshlumpeater drops the soldier, and the BFG convinces him that he was bitten by a snake. The Fleshlumpeater isn’t the most questioning of giants, so he believes the BFG, even when the BFG gets him to close his eyes while the soldiers tie him up. #DreamTeam.

The soldiers fly the giants back to England and lower them into a deep pit. The BFG gives the royal gardener snozzcumber seeds so they’ll have an endless supply of snozzcumbers to feed to the giants.

The Queen makes the BFG The Royal Dreamblower and has a giant house built for him near her palace, with a little cottage built next door for Sophie. The now-famous BFG gets an education and starts writing about his life. And we learn that he wrote the book that we just read. No wonder it was such a clever mix of English and Giantese, right?