James and the Giant Peach
First edition (US)
|
|
| Author | Roald Dahl |
|---|---|
| Illustrator |
Nancy Ekholm Burkert (first US edition) Michael Simeon (first UK edition) Emma Chichester Clark (1990 UK edition) Quentin Blake (1995 edition) Lane Smith (1996 US edition) |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's novel |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. |
|
Publication date
|
1961 |
| Media type | Hardcover |
| Pages | 160 |
| OCLC | 50568125 |
| [Fic] 21 | |
| LC Class | PZ8.D137 Jam 2002 |
James and the Giant Peach is a popular children's novel written in 1961 by British author Roald Dahl. The original first edition published by Alfred Knopf featured illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert. There have been reillustrated versions of it over the years, done by Michael Simeon for the first British edition, Emma Chichester Clark, Lane Smith and Quentin Blake. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1996.
The plot centres on a young English orphan boy who enters a gigantic, magical peach, and has a wild and surreal cross-world adventure with seven magically-altered garden bugs he meets. They set off on a journey to escape from James' two mean and cruel aunts. Roald Dahl was originally going to write about a giant cherry, but changed it to James and the Giant Peach because a peach is "prettier, bigger and squishier than a cherry."
Because of the story's occasional macabre and potentially frightening content, it has become a regular target of the censors and is No. 56 on the American Library Association's top 100 list of most frequently challenged books. The actors Jeremy Irons, Andrew Sachs, and Julian Rhind-Tutt provide the English language audiobook recordings.
Protagonist James Henry Trotter, 4 years old, lives with his loving parents in a beautiful cottage by the sea in the south of England, until his parents are killed by an escaped rhinoceros during a shopping trip in London.
As a result, James is forced to live with his two cruel aunts, Spiker and Sponge, in a run-down house on a high, desolate hill near the White Cliffs of Dover. For four years, James is treated as a drudge, forced to do hard labour, beaten for hardly any reason, improperly fed, and forced to sleep on bare floorboards in the attic. One summer afternoon, after a particularly upsetting altercation with his aunts, James stumbles across a mysterious stranger, who gives him magic green "crocodile tongues" which, when drunk with water, will bring him happiness and great adventures. On the way to the house, James spills the "tongues" onto a barren peach tree, which then produces a single peach that quickly grows to nearly the size of a house. The next day the aunts sell tickets to neighbours to see the giant peach.
...
Wikipedia