<3<3<3<3<3<3 Loved this book, as any Roald Dahl book :) So imaginative and creative. I felt like I was a kid again imagining insects in my garden :P

Mean ugly aunts take care of a little boy names James and he meets this random magical stranger that gives him magical bugs that he accidentally drops on the ground. The next day there's a giant peach and he see's a tunnel and goes in to find a bunch of life sized bugs that have personalities. They cut the peach loose and fall to the sea. Sharks begin eating and attacking the bottom of the peach so they get seagulls to fly them up into the sky where they meet Cloud people who paint rainbows and make it snow and rain. Then they end up in New York where James stays inside the stone in a park for all to see.

خوب بود دنیای جالبی داشت اما از اونجایی که شباهتاش به چارلی و آسانسور شیشه‌ای خیلی زیاد بود یه جاهایی تکراری بود روندش. به هر در مل لذتبخش بود.
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بخش‌های ماندگار کتاب:
شاید ما غرق نمی‌شدیم! شاید هم آن‌قدر ترسیده بودیم که فکر می‌کردیم داریم غرق می‌شویم.
...
در تمام این دنیای ما چیزهای زیادی هست که تو هنوز به آن‌ها فکر نکرده‌ای.

Read as part of The Infinite Variety Reading Challenge, based on the BBC's Big Read Poll of 2003.

The only way to describe this book is "fun". Yeah, it's got whimsy and adventure and imagination and some very Dahlian deaths and the Horrible People with their Horrible Traits, but it's not got that kind of wonderful spirit that some his other books have.

Whilst I'd never say that adults should not read children's books, I personally haven't been getting the same amount of enjoyment from these books as I usually do from books that are written for kids. I think with a lot of these books it's the reputation of the author and his more successful books that holds them up.


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Roald Dahl continues his mission to ruin your child by insisting that a man-sized centipede would not be the most horrifying thing in the world. Centipedes are nightmares, man. Wanna see a foot-long centipede hunting bats? Of course you don't, that's awful.

Anyway, so here's a book about a kid who murders his legal guardians and takes off with his creepy friends. Along the way they meet magical people who make rainbows, and pick a fight with them. When they're done they deface the Empire State Building. As you can imagine, the result of all this is that they get a parade.

There are some great songs in here, too, all of which should be sung to the tune of something by Gilbert & Sullivan.

I really love this story from Roald Dahl and the amazing and weird adventure that James has with his giant peach and all his new friends and the horrible characters he meets along the way. There is a good mix of fun and weird characters in this book and there are also some very mean characters like Spike and Sponge who are the horrible aunts James has to live with.
I also really enjoy the illustrations in the book by Quentin Blake.

Estoy gratamente sorprendido con este autor. Desborda imaginación y dinamismo. Y a pesar de lo estrambóticas que pueden llegar a ser las historias para niños, Roald Dahl, con su coherencia y continuidad mantiene al lector sumergido en ese mundo, como si todo fuera real y posible (no puedo decir lo mismo de Lewis Carroll).
Por otro lado, no hay ñoñerías en esta historia, y se lee muy a gusto siendo adulto.
También, como lectura en inglés, es rica en vocabulario. Para un nivel B1-B2 se precisa el uso constante del diccionario, aunque no es imprescindible para seguir el hilo.
El actor de voz es estupendo y muy divertido, con todas las voces que pone a los distintos personajes.

Never read Ronald Dahl books as a kid and I'm not sure why. this is the second one I've read first being Charlie and the chocolate factory, and I loved it. Dahl is so good with characters and simple themes. Next up is Matilda.

When I was in third grade, the first great crush of my life, Scott Murphy, stood up on the picnic table outside of the trailer that housed my third grade class and instead of reading his lines -- James' words -- from his paperback copy while we were all trying to rehearse the chapter we were supposed to present to the entire class the next day, he performed the most passionate version of "Paradise City" by Guns N Roses that I have ever seen.

To this day, I love Gun N Roses, I love Scott Murphy, and I love this book. Magical.

James and the Giant Peach - B A N N E D!


Recently I joined the Banned Books group and one of the group reads for this month was James and the Giant Peach. I'm sure there are many GR readers who have read a Roald Dahl book and/or seen a movie adaptation of one of his books. If you have, then you would know that Dahl has consistently written stories that entertain children with morals and life lessons that even adults can appreciate.

So why was this book banned?

Let's first take a look at what James and the Giant Peach is about...

The story

This is a story about a boy named James Henry Trotter who is forced to live with his two abusive aunts (Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker) in the English countryside after his parents are tragically killed from a rhinoceros attack in London.

n  n

James is a very sad and miserable little boy. One day, a mysterious old man presents James with a bag of tiny green crystals that have magical powers. James is told that once he swallows the crystals with water, marvellous, fabulous and unbelievable things will happen to him, and he'll never be miserable again. James rushes back to the house to get some water and accidentally falls and spills the tiny green crystals near a dormant peach tree which sits on a hill nearby. The lifeless tree suddenly sprouts a peach, which begins to grow larger and larger.

His abusive aunts take notice of the giant peach. They fence it off and begin charging people money to see it. And after locking up James all day, the aunts force him to clean up after the crowds are gone.

n  n

It is while James is cleaning up around the giant peach that he discovers a tunnel leading to the middle of it. There, he finds a group of human-sized insects: Centipede, Grasshopper, Spider, Earthworm, Ladybird, Silkworm, and Glow-worm. The group befriends James and attribute their giant growth to having eaten the tiny green crystals that James had spilled.

n  n  n  n  n  n  n  n

Early the next day, the group decides to escape the horrible aunts by cutting the stem connecting the peach to the tree. The giant peach begins to roll down the hillside, flattening and killing James' two aunts in the process.

The giant peach rolls faster and faster through towns, across land until finally it crashes into the ocean. To avoid a group of vicious sharks, James attaches strings (produced by the spider and silkworm) to hundreds of seagulls and the peach is lifted and carried in the air.

As they are floating, they come across some Cloud-Men, mystic creatures who are responsible for the different types of weather, like rain, snow, and hail. And as they are drifting through the clouds, the peach crashes into a rainbow, which snaps some of the strings, and the peach begins to descend. As the peach approaches land, it crashes on top of the Empire State Building.

In the end, all of the insects become successful in America, and James, who has made a lot of friends, lives in the large peach pip in Central Park.

Key themes

This story urges readers to take a closer look at the world around them. First, a closer look at nature. There are several amazing things happening in the natural world, from photosynthesis to the water cycle. The book even explores the importance of each type of insect and how each of them contributes to the well-being of the environment.

But this idea of looking closer at the world also applies to looking at other people and how we should take the time to talk to them to get to know them. In doing so, we can find out how they contribute to the rest of us since everyone contributes to the world.

On a more hopeful note, the underlying message of this story is that there are ways to escape a troubling homelife. The verbal and emotional abuse James receives is a bit over-the-top, but that might be the reality for some kids. How do they escape that? And while they can't fly away on a giant peach, ultimately, this story suggests that abused kids can find possible escapes through friends and writing. That the power of relationships and creativity and imagination are all a person needs to take them anywhere they want to go i.e. it shows kids that no matter how bad things may seem, or how bad they get, there is always hope.

So why was James and the Giant Peach banned?

It was banned as being too scary for the targeted age group, mysticism, sexual inferences, profanity, racism, references to tobacco and alcohol, and claims that it promotes disobedience, drugs, and communism.

A challenge was brought before the school council in Indian River County, Florida, because of the story’s mystical elements involving magic crocodile tongues which enchanted the peach tree.

The Times of London reported that it was once banned in a Wisconsin town because a reference to a spider licking her lips could be “taken in two ways, including sexual.”


That Times statement conjured up this image!! haha :))

Other challenges involve repeated use of the word “ass,” which resulted in a 1991 challenge in Altoona, Wisconsin. The following year, a woman in Hernando County, Florida, took issue with Grasshopper’s statement

n  “I’d rather be fried alive and eaten by a Mexican!”n

as well as references to snuff, tobacco and whiskey. Her complaints to her 10-year-old daughter’s school principal led to a review by the regional school board.

In a blog by Madeline Holler, she took issue not with the language or drugs, but jokes about physical characteristics because of the physical description of James’ cruel guardians Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker. One is very fat and one is very skinny and their features are laughed at, criticized, and meant to be evoke disgust.

Conclusion

Book challenges and banning is proof to the power of good literature, creative language, and original imagery. While some might have issues with certain realities of the world that children are growing up in; and as troubled as it makes adults to be reminded of these facts as they attempt to shield their children from harm, children’s literature is a great way for them to get a glimpse at the issues that they WILL have to deal with some day.

I can’t think of a single book from my childhood that distorted my morality or sense of self. I was also lucky enough to have parents who didn’t shield me from the darker aspects of life. If I had an issue or question, it was talked about openly and honestly.

I have such fond memories of watching this movie with my sisters. I finally got to read the book with my son (sons some of the time when my 4 year old wanted to pay attention). There were elements in the book that don’t exist in the movie (like Cloud Men) and vice versa. I think my son’s favorite was the descriptions of Aunt Spiker and Aunt Sponge- and I must say- I agree.

What an odd little book. Even for Roald Dahl.

I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory recently as part of a reading challenge. While I fully anticipated The Weird (I mean, Dahl's reputation kind of precedes itself), the storyline was still linear and progressed in a way that the reader could sense an impending resolve. It was fun!

James and the Giant Peach had all The Weird, but no direction. It was as if the reader was bobbing through the air on a giant peach subject to the wims of...oh wait.

But seriously, I think the lack of direction really lost my interest. This one just wasn't for me.

I'd rate this a PG because HAVE YOU SEEN THESE CREEPY ILLUSTRATIONS.

I was surprised to find, while reading this to my daughter, that I had never read it before. I expected to pick up the thread of it after a dozen or so pages, but turns out, no.
I probably didn't enjoy it as much as other Roald Dahl children's books, but it is without doubt imaginative and clever, and my daughter liked it. I know a lot of people consider this their favourite, so not sure what didn't work for me.
Three stars.