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James and the Giant Peach

Description

When James drops magic crystals by the peach tree, the toy peach starts growing, and before long, it’s as big as a house, with a secret entranceway.

When poor James Henry Trotter loses his parents in a horrible rhinoceros accident, he is forced to live with his two wicked aunts, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker. After three years he becomes "the saddest and loneliest boy you could find." Then one day, a wizened old man in a dark-green suit gives James a bag of magic crystals that promise to reverse his misery forever. When James accidentally spills the crystals on his aunts' withered peach tree, he sets the adventure in motion. From the old tree a single peach grows, and grows, and grows some more, until finally James climbs inside the giant fruit and rolls away from his despicable aunts to a whole new life. James befriends an assortment of hilarious characters, including Grasshopper, Earthworm, Miss Spider, and Centipede--each with his or her own song to sing. Roald Dahl's rich imagery and amusing characters ensure that parents will not tire of reading this classic aloud, which they will no doubt be called to do over and over again! With the addition of witty black and white pencil drawings by Lane Smith (of The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs fame), upon which the animation for the Disney movie was based, this classic, now in paperback, is bursting with renewed vigor. We'll just come right out and say it: James and the Giant Peach is one of the finest children's books ever written. (Ages 9 to 12)

Reviews

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-07-10
Summary: "a perfect deus ex machina"

I never read Dahl while I was a child, and now I'm not sure why not.

I did like the book, as it is inventive and well told. What is best is the manner and speed of the parent's dispatch and the character's relegation to the bad place. (If you read any children's fiction, you know that this has to happen sooner or later. All positive parental figures in children's literature come from outside the home.)

James goes on an adventure, earns a sense of himself and is emancipated from the oppression of his aunts. The conflict is not too scary but instead allows for a sense of wonder in the child reader.

His emancipation is through the means of magic handed to him, a perfect deus ex machina. Dahl plays with the conventions of the literature, but his work does not come across as formulaic, instead is something new. I am on my way to get another book of his off my shelf.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-07-03
Summary: "One of my Favorites!!"

It's to be another Roald Dahl classic this week, Esteemed Reader. Whoo hoo! As you know, Roald Dahl is my favorite author and James and the Giant Peach is one of my all-time favorite stories. It's the sort of book that will convince even the Mike TV's of the world to pause their video games and not unpause them until the book is finished. In my quest to better understand middle grade fiction (thus improving my ninja skills), I try to read as widely as possible. But I also find it useful to go back and reread the books I loved as a child with adult eyes.


James and the Giant Peach is a prime example of one of the things I love most about middle grade fiction: stories for kids can go anywhere and kids, unlike many adults, are willing to accompany the author to the previously unfathomed depths of human imagination. Who else but children could understand and love the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Stephen King and William S. Burrows and many other adult writers have written a lot of out there stuff, but none of them touches the absolute insanity of James and the Giant Peach.

So here's the plot and I swear I'm not making this up (I wish I had, though): James Henry Trotter is a nice boy sent to live with his wicked and abusive aunts after his parents are killed by an escaped rhinoceros. So far, it's a pretty standard set up, right (except the part about the rhino)? But wait! One day when James is in the garden he meets a wizard who just happens to be in the neighborhood. Okay, a little strange, but after all, this is children's fiction. The wizard gives James some magic crystals (awfully nice of him), which James accidentally spills near a peach tree. The crystals enchant the tree so that it grows a peach the size of a large house.

Rob, I hear you saying, that's not so very weird. True, but there is more story to come! James tunnels inside the giant peach all the way to its pit where he finds a wooden door. Inside the giant peach are giant insects who are all very happy to see James and are eager to take a voyage with him. Is that weird enough for you? No? Well the insects chew through the stem of the peach and then they and James ride it down a hill, squashing James' wicked aunts, into the ocean, where they sail off into the horizon.

What's stranger than a human boy and his giant insect pals sailing the ocean inside a giant peach? I'm so glad you asked! Because what happens next is sharks attack the peach, eating away at its tasty flesh to eventually get at James and the bugs. But not to worry. Among the giant bugs is a giant silkworm and a giant spider and they spin long strands of web and silk that James is able to use to lasso seagulls. So the answer to the original query what is stranger than a human boy and his giant insect palls sailing the ocean inside a giant peach is a human boy and his giant insect pals flying to New York in a giant peach by way of hundreds of lassoed seagulls.

Now then, I want you to imagine an adult story in which the plot I have just described to you would fit in. Say we change James to an adult. Say we even end the story by revealing that it was all a dream, something Dahl is too classy to ever do. I can't think of an adult author who could pull this plot off. But a middle grade author? No problem. That's what I love most about kids. When I was a kid and I read this book, I didn't find it the least bit strange that there were giant bugs living inside the giant peach. Kids just sort of go with the flow when it comes to stories, so a writer has a great deal more leeway with the suspension of disbelief.

James and the Giant Peach is a stupendous feat of imagining, and it's worth reading just for that. But as with all great stories, there's a little more to this one. Note how sad James is while living with his aunts, who call him terrible names and mistreat and abuse him. Note how he has no ideas for getting himself out of a bad spot because he has no sense of self worth. Next, note how the giant bugs praise James for everything he does and how supportive they are of him. In that environment, James flourishes and hatches all sorts of brilliant ideas, such as flying his giant peach to New York. There's something to that, I think, and it may be a large part of why James and the Giant Peach has survived years and years of readers and is likely to be read for years to come.

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Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-06-21
Summary: "James and the Giant Peach"

James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl

As is common in many of Roald Dahl's books, James is a child stuck in a horrible situation. Orphaned, he's living with two nasty aunts who use him as manual labor and don't ever let him have fun.

But someone is looking out for James, and a mysterious little man gives him a bag of green magic crystals...only...he drops them. But his chance at happiness isn't lost, because the crystals are dropped beneath a peach tree. The tree, formerly barren, suddenly produces a peach that grows larger by the minute, until it's the size of a house. Inside the peach are a variety of common garden insects, such as a centipede and a grasshopper, each as large as a human because they too ingested some of the magic crystals.

James and his new friends take a magical journey on the gigantic peach, as journey only the imagination of Roald Dahl could produce. I'll never look at rainbows or hail the same way again, or seagulls!

4/5.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-05-27
Summary: "Every child should experience this book"

This is a glorious little tale about the giddiness of being a child. Yes, it is shockingly dark in the beginning, how poor James leads such a miserable existence, but once the peculiar things start to happen, Dahl takes readers on a joyful romp around the world.

There is one chapter that doesn't fit the tone at all, in which James basically interviews all of his mutated insect/arachnid/other companions about how valuable they are to humanity, and it comes across feeling like an editorially-mandated After School Special ("Hey kids! Be nice to bugs!"). I like to think that perhaps Dahl was mocking the inability of grown-ups to write for children without trying to bonk them on the heads with a lesson, but it's not artfully accomplished. The book is much stronger when the tone is cheeky and ludicrous, like when the gigantic Centipede composes enthusiastic limericks about the way an enormous peach squashed some of the villains of the story, or when Dahl rewards readers with the most spectacular role reversal of all for a lonely boy who has been denied the opportunity just to play with other children.

This book was first read to me in my kindergarten class, and I find that I love it more each time I read it for myself. If you care about children, you will share this book with them.

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Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2010-05-21
Summary: "childhood favorite"

I was thrilled to own a copy of one of my favorite childhood books. The illustrations of this publication year can't be beat! The book arrived in a timely manner and in decent condition. The only thing that was missing was the book jacket...I wish that would have been stated in the book description.