James and the Giant Peach

This was one of my favorite novels as a child. I was captivated by the completely absurd idea of a gigantic peach populated by talking insects traveling across the Atlantic Ocean.

I recently listened to the audio version, read by Roald Dahl, with my young son. It was an abridged version, but just as delightful. I had forgotten all the poetry in the book, and Dahl's reading of it is wonderful, especially when he forces the rhymes just a little bit. This book deserves to be a classic.

Now that my son is a little older, we have read the full version out loud together. I had forgotten about the Cloud-Men! I think I love Roald Dahl so much because he is so irreverent. He breaks the rules of children's book writing and doesn't care. Note to show more squeamish parents: in addition to giant insects, there are also some mild curse words in the text. I feel like Dahl is giving his young readers a sly wink: "Let's see what we can get away with!" show less

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl is a sweet, fictitious tale of a boy and the adventure he takes to escape his abusive aunts. He is confined to the hellish hill Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker have sucked him into, without a single playmate, toy, or game in sight. He is beaten for minor offenses or traits the ghouls deem offensive; his belly aches and grumbles constantly; and perhaps worst of all, with his parents’ death, he lost every other good thing he had ever known.

Despite his diabolical conditions, James remains hopeful. Past the gates of his imprisonment, he gazes at a soft beach; the one place he can see and remember the feeling of contentment. He dreams of the lions that guard the library down among the city blocks. He show more carries his current circumstances like a package that will one day be dropped off, and he continues to keep his chin up as often as a child possibly can… With the occasional good cry, if he needs one.

One day, a strange man with knowledge akin to the terrifying truth that lies within folklore approaches James and offers him a gift that will forever change his life: a bag of glowing, green worms. The instructions he gives James are detailed and difficult for a child to follow, which is something I find to be quite intentional. James gladly accepts, knowing that this may be the opportunity he has been praying for, and runs off as quickly and quietly as possible.

He drops the bag; the worms wriggle out; down, down, down into the dirt they squirm…

Defeated and distraught, James slumps back to his room, and sleeps fitfully. He awakes to find a peach on a willful tree branch, which had previously refused to treat anyone around it with a tiny blossom. It grows into a heap that his aunts profit off of, but James finds a secret within the house-sized piece of fruit…

James meets giant bugs, each blessed by the lucky worms he had dropped, and travels across the sea beside them, becoming the confident leader he was destined to be. Trials await the company of peach-goers, and incredible actions are needed to overcome them. A boy who feared being locked away forever is released and his true potential is reached.

I highly recommend this book to readers of all ages, and doubly recommend it to those who have decided it is geared to a much younger audience. Everyone can take a bite of wisdom from this masterpiece by Roald Dahl. show less

Most books with spiders are a hard pass for me but this is the first time an author has made me care for bugs. The personalities found within Dahl's characters is so amazingly developed. I'm sure everyone will be able to think of people in their lives that fit each of these characters.

James and the Giant Peach tells the story of young James. He is a boy, orphaned when his parents were unexpectedly consumed by a berserk rhinoceros. Forced to stay with his aunts Spiker and Sponge, both as unpleasant as their names would imply, he lives an unhappy life slaving away for the miserable creatures until one day when a visitor is in the yard. The old man gives him a bag of green squiggly things [comprised of crocodile tongues that have gone through some delightfully absurd preparations for their task] that are magical. James, unfortunately, does not seem destined to consume them as instructed, and trips, spilling them everywhere. The adventure truly begins, however, when they begin to work their magic on the things they show more contact. Not long after, James finds himself riding in a giant peach with a centipede, a spider, a ladybug, a grasshopper, a silkworm, a glowworm and an earth worm for company--all of whom have no idea where the wind may take them.

The book is yet another delightful example of Roald Dahl's willingness to suspend disbelief to the point of joyous chaos. It was not the first time I had read the novel, nor will it likely be the last, as I'm quite fond of it. What struck me odd about the novel this time around is that, well, it seems we can't write these things anymore. Truly Spiker and Sponge are deplorable humans, but children are raised never to speak with strangers, especially creepy ones that offer you crocodile tongues...it's almost unnerving, the descriptions of the balding man and his eccentric behavior...but still. James takes the opportunity granted him and glorious things occur. The book calls on all of our desires to escape where we are and to find good friends, good food and a good time elsewhere, always going up.
Despite the curious nature of the scenes at hand, Dahl describes them with simple clarity. It's initially hard to think 'okay, this grasshopper is the size of a large dog' and to imagine the interactions, but as you read, Dahl slips things in to aid your mind. He allows for clarity without being overly controlling--a tedious balance to achieve, if one is not practiced.
I must admit that I never did read these as a child--Dahl's books, I mean--and that I do not know what I might have thought if I had. I have friends who look at me, appalled, saying, 'You've never read The B.F.G.?' I shrug and say no. But even now, as I near twenty-three [looking ever forward to twenty-five, when I have decided I shall have a Scooby-Doo party for myself], I realize that there is a certain magic in Dahl's work that makes it timeless. I do not know if it is the lack of objects that date the time period [say, I dunno, an eight-track player] or the use of very simple concepts that are ever-present, or [more likely still] a combination of the two...but that's getting into the realm of 'what makes literature good literature' and so on, and after working, my brain just wants sleep...but don't take my word for it. Hehe. show less

I'd never read this one before and enjoyed it well enough on audio. It has Dahl's signature absurdity and sense of both the fun and the slightly gruesome. There wasn't *quite* enough story for me to be fully engaged, but Rhind-Tutt did a good enough job reading it and doing voices that I mostly didn't mind that. Note that there's some period-typical unpleasantness like fat-shaming and other body-negativity and some throw-away racialized comments that are distasteful, at best, today.

We went and saw the stage version of James and the Giant Peach and it was Emmett's first play! He chortled through the whole thing--the funny parts, the craaazy parts--and then we got ice cream and looked at the murals in Chemainus and he pooped and it was the nicest day.

And it reminded me what a stone classic (but freestone or clingstone??) this is: the gooey and not a little bit gross amazement of entering the peach-womb for the first time, to be reborn into a better childhood; the giant bugs with their well-articulated personalities and foibles and wisdom, Socratic crackpots and inhuman guides along the path of human maturation and in a lineage stretching back to Baloo and Bagheera and beyond (you have to take up the human burden show more eventually, and that's where the animals have to leave you behind); the absolute facility with which Dahl works on two levels--kids' farce and grown-up farce--with the encounter with the Russians and the final descent into a self-parodizing New York; the absolutely on-key mix of the wondrous (those seagulls! the cloud monsters!) and grotesque (if Emmett only wishes periodically that his parents would be killed by a rhinoceros, I think we'll be doing all right) that I think (however we might try to elbow children into fitting our angel- and devil-narratives as they recur and oscillate over the development of the culture) is basically what childhood is.

You never know what kind of kid you're gonna get, and I'm starting to suspect with Emmett too that every time I think I have a handle on it, that'll be just when he does something new to surprise me; but for whatever my feeling's worth in this case, I feel like this book is about as close to a sure thing children's crowdpleaser as there is. show less

Young orphan James Henry Trotter lives with his mean spinster aunts, Sponge and Spiker. His aunts keep James busy doing chores and never give him time to play either by himself or with other children. One day, James is given some magic crystals with a promise that they'll change his life, but he loses them on the ground before he can follow the instructions he's been given. Imagine his surprise when a tree in the garden where he spilled the crystals grows an enormous peach! James explores the inside of the peach and meets several creatures, including a centipede, and earthworm, a grasshopper, a silkworm, and a spider. The peach rolls away with James inside it, launching James and his companions on a big adventure.

I would have enjoyed show more this book more if I had discovered it as a child. As an adult reader, I'm too aware of the educational aspects of the story, such as facts about the insects that James meets inside the peach. I also couldn't help being concerned about James's willingness to accept the crystals from a complete stranger, and that he would have followed the stranger's instructions to make a drink from the crystals if he hadn't accidentally dropped them in the garden.

James's ingenuity and the way the traveling companions work together to get themselves out of difficult circumstances provide positive messages for children about problem solving and team work. This is a great story for early readers to read on their own. The audio version read by Julian Rhind-Tutt is also enjoyable, with a variety of vocal characterizations and sound effects that enhance the story. show less