The Magic Finger

The Magic Finger is a children's story by the British writer Roald Dahl, first published in 1966 in the United States by Harper & Row with illustrations by William Pene du Bois; the first British edition came from Allen & Unwin in 1968.

The book is narrated by an eight-year-old girl who lives on a remote farm in the English countryside. Next door are the Greggs, who hunt birds and animals for sport, and the narrator finds this intolerable. She has one unusual attribute: when something makes her angry enough, a finger on her hand shoots out a beam of energy at whoever annoyed her, and what the beam does is unpredictable. The story turns on what happens when the Greggs take their hunting too far and the finger goes off. Later editions were illustrated by other artists, among them Tony Ross and Quentin Blake.