✩ 4 stars
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this book has put me in a major spring mood

Roald Dahl has never let me down, and this is no different! I'm surprised I enjoyed it as much as I did, considering that this is a children's book. It was creative, original, and nostalgic, and in a sense I felt like a child again.

I mean, if all audio books were like this, I'd probably listen to a lot more audio books.

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Join Academy Award-winning filmmaker, Taika Waititi as he reads James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl, in full across 10 episodes, to raise money for @Partners In Health at: http://www.pih.org/giantpeach

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FULL EPISODE 1: James & the Giant Peach w/ Taika & Friends ft. Nick Kroll, Liam & Chris Hemsworth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29LDB...

EP2: Meryl Streep & Benedict Cumberbatch join Taika Waitit to read James & the Giant Peach
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX3Q5...

EP3 Cate Blanchett, Sarah Paulson & more join Taika Waititi to read James & Giant Peach
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVO7s...

EP4: Cara Delevingne, Olivia Wilde & more join Taika Waititi to read James & the Giant Peach #WithMe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9o0n...

EP5: Ryan Reynolds reads James and the Giant Peach with Taika Waititi | #WithMe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOxT8...

EP6: Duchess of Cornwall, Lupita Nyong'o & Josh Gad read James & the Giant Peach w/ Taika | #WithMe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g1wR...

EP 7: Yo-Yo Ma, Billy Porter, Cynthia Erivo, Jamie Cullum & Utkarsh Ambudkar read w/ Taika! #WithMe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcjN1...

EP 8: Mindy Kaling, Ben Schwartz and Gordon Ramsay read James & the Giant Peach w/ Taika! | #WithMe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YInGt...

EP9: Governor Andrew Cuomo and Anna Wintour read James & the Giant Peach w/ Taika Waititi! | #WithMe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8GhT...

EP10: Taika is joined by Jojo Rabbit co-stars Roman & Archie to read James & the Giant Peach #WithMe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVxmE...

IT'S HILARIOUS OMG

Meanwhile, the story itself is super weird. Classic Roald Dahl - that guy was seriously off his rocker when he wrote this one. The insects are a funny bunch but James is an annoying little know-it-all and where he pulls his information from is anybody's guess. I'm pretty sure the ridiculousness of Dahl's writing is why I wasn't too keen on his stuff as a kid. He totally makes up his own science and I am not okay with that.

Would never have read this myself so thanks Taika and friends for doing it for me and making it a thousand times better than it would have been. It was a lot of fun. 2-star story, 4-star experience; 3 stars all up.

Sometimes it's just really nice to revisit childhood favorites. We all know Roald Dahl is such a sweet and wonderful writer, his stories are comforting and classic.

Awesome. Favourite story of my children and myself of course. Recommended

original read: 2002

This was good fun, but the movie is still better.

I can't seem to stop reading books by Roald Dahl! :D

This time it's about a boy whose parents die so he has to live with two aunts, who are terrible people. They constantly mistreat him and keep him from meeting other children.
Just one small note here: Why are the bad people in Roald Dahl's stories always either enormously fat or very long and thin?! It's a constant throughout his stories and I wonder if there is a special reason that can be found in his life's story?!

Another note here: A boy losing his parents having to live with ghastly relatives and his name is James Henry Trotter ... am I reading too much into this?!


Anyway, one day there is sort of a miracle, making a peach on a tree in his aunts' garden grow (and to an enormous size too). Inside, James meets a lot of insects and soon they go on a trip together. Yes, this book basically is a giant road trip story.


Again, the author demonstrates his huge ability to come up with the most fantastic events, funny rhymes and songs and he invented quite some marvellous creatures in this book.
The one star I deducted, by the way, was because I didn't like that the sharks were made out to be the bad guys since this teaches children reading the book a lie that has been spread for a long time, causing a lot of damage! Moreover, I also don't agree with the author that the Cloud Man were bad or malicious - after all, it was the Centipede who started the trouble and then they shattered a beautiful rainbow, which would have caused me, too, to go after them!


At first I was also a bit irritated that at the slightest inconvenience everyone was proclaiming THE END and started panicking but at the end of the story I started thinking ... What if THAT was the whole purpose of the story? I mean, whenever the creatures on/in the peach were panicking James found a solution by staying calm and thinking and in the end when the companions had arrived in New York City, everybody there was panicking for no actual reason but a nice little talk (again, calm and civil) solved the problem.
So maybe the moral here is that staying calm and using your head while keeping as cool as you can is the better way?! If so, it is marvellous.

Oh, before I forget: yes, this book has Quentin Blake's cute illustrations again. And yes, they are as pretty as ever (FYI: mine are black and white, which I believe was their original form).

Dahl's imagination and writing skill is masterful. He transports many of us to wonderful fun worlds of adventure and peculiarity with characters that every child would love to meet. A conjurer of great bedtime stories and memories of being young and learning to read those first books.
He must be thee most famous writer. This tale of a boy escaping two bad ladies into a world of make believe via a giant peach is full of fun and thrilling moments. His writing so well done, the vocabulary at times is more than a child could understand. I had fun reading this as I never read this story before unlike the rest of his stories. I have seen the cartoon of this. Reading it was so much better due to the precious time I shared with my son in experiencing its narrative. This was a big achievement for me to actually complete a novel(novella) with the boy instead of mostly a collection of short stories and picture books. I do hope one day he can really take up reading with an even more passion unaided, and compete with me in the amount of time spent reading.
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Three cheers for James Henry Trotter, a child who triumphed where I surely wouldn't have.

You see, Goodreaders, the zany imagination of Roald Dahl did dream up the most believable-and-dangerous adventures that could happen because of a certain peach, a giant peach.

Humor and terror alternate in this story; no matter what, the writing is almost magisterial in its ability to command the respect of this reader. Never any need to suspend my disbelief: Roald Dahl has charmed it into submission for the entire duration of this densely packed story.

peaches are very delicious, and roald dahl books are very good, and long story short even though inhabiting a stone fruit sounds like a sticky and unpleasant situation, i would do it.

part of a series i'm doing where i review books i read a long time ago. not much to say about this one.

For a brief period in my childhood, I was obsessed with this. After seeing the trailer, I noticed that the movie trailer tie-in edition was available in the next month's book order form so I had to have it to read before I saw it.


Then I saw the movie and of course, really loved it. It was whimsical and visually appealing, even if it did deviate from the source material in parts.


I even remember wanting to only eat and drink peach stuff for a while, and since it was the 90's I had to have my Snapple Peach Iced Tea.


So that's it, just some warm nostalgia I will always have for this book.

I read this so many times as a child and I was always so fiercely jealous of James.

James is a dreamer. He has a boring life and one day he gets the opportunity to experience something weird and surreal. Everyday breaks away from mundanity and becomes something exciting and unusual. James makes friends with interesting insects and explores places he has never seen. A giant peach takes him there. His dreams become reality.

This is certainly a story that could make any child (or adult too) fall in love with fantasy.