Matilda Timeline and Summary

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• Matilda has terrible parents who don't recognize how special she is—the girl is reading and doing tricky math by the time she's three. 
• Before she turns five, she starts going to the library by herself, where the librarian helps her pick out more challenging books. 
• Frustrated with her life at home, she decides to play a few pranks on her prickly papa. 
• First she puts superglue in her dad's hat. Then, she puts a parrot in the family chimney and convinces everyone else that it's a ghost. Then, she mixes her mom's hair dye with her dad's hair tonic, so her dad's hair gets colored in funkily.
• Then Matilda starts school, where she joins Miss Honey's class. Miss Honey realizes pretty quickly how great and smart Matilda is, and can tell that Matilda's a genius. 
• At school, Matilda makes friends with Lavender and learns about how horrible the Trunchbull is from a girl named Hortensia.
• Matilda also sees two examples of the Trunchbull in action—first, when the Trunchbull throws Amanda around by her hair, and second, when the Trunchbull makes Bruce eat an entire cake.
• When the Trunchbull visits Miss Honey's class, the headmistress blames Matilda for putting a newt in her water.
• Matilda is so mad that she actually gets telekinetic powers (seriously, we did not make that up), and knocks the water and newt into Miss Trunchbull.
• When Matilda gives her teacher the real scoop on what happened, Miss Honey invites the girl over for tea. 
• During her visit to Miss Honey's house, Matilda learns how the Trunchbull has tormented Miss Honey—taking all her money and treating her like dirt—so she hatches a plan to help her awesome teacher. 
• The next time the Trunchbull visits Matilda's class, Matilda puts her plan into action. She uses her mind to move a piece of chalk, which writes a ghostly message to the Trunchbull, convincing the headmistress to right all the wrongs she did to Miss Honey.
• After the Trunchbull is defeated, Matilda moves up to the highest class, although she still visits Miss Honey every day. 
• One day Matilda goes home to find that her family is moving away. She runs to Miss Honey and asks if the two can live together.
• Miss Honey says yes, and with her parents' permission, Matilda moves in with Miss Honey, and the two become a family at last.