James and the Giant Peach CD

Rating:
Summary: Awsome book
Review: This is a funny and adventerous book about a boy named James and a few bugs who get in side a peach that is grown by little green things and I guess that they make things grow enormous. In this peach they figure out how to solve the problems on their trip from England all the way to New York City. This book is neat and cool. I recomend it to all book worms.

Rating:
Summary: A book to be enjoyed by parents and children alike
Review: This is a typically, wonderful Roald Dahl children's book. It is about a newly orphaned boy forced to live the rest of his youth with his horribly disgusting Aunts Sponge and Spiker. Life is miserable for him until he meets a very special little man with some magical powers. The story continues from here with some of the most engaging and entertaining characters in all of children's literature. Children enjoy this book so much because it is written completely from a children's point of view. Roald Dahl doesn't write what he thinks parents would want their kids to read, he writes what kids like to read, but he does so in a clean, non threatening way to both children and adults. He has a wonderful command of language and uses rhyming, nonsense words and sounds to make the story come alive. It is a wonderful book for older readers to read independently, but it is even more fun to be read aloud. Children of all ages enjoy having this book read to them. The characters lend themselves to different voice interpretations which make it fun to read and fun to listen to. It is one of the rare books that parents enjoy reading as much as children. This book belongs in any children's library because it can be read over and over again

Rating:
Summary: An absolute masterpiece!
Review: James Trotter is the kind of boy whose life is so miserable that makes me think Harry Potter should quit complaining about the Dursleys. James's legal guardians, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, are so cruel that they think nothing of administering a beating, or leaving James in the bottom of a well overnight.

But young Trotter's life takes a turn for the better, or at least the more exciting, when he bobbles a bad of magical crystals that create a giant peach and a cast of enormous insects living inside it. Before long, James is on a wonderful adventure across the ocean, seeking happiness in a world that has been far too cruel to him to date.

This is one of the best Dahl stories ever, ranking right up there with Danny Champion of the World and The BFG. The major plot turns and the tiny details are so well done that the reader is completely engrossed, from beginning to end. Scenes involving sharks and seagulls are thrilling, and the prose is littered with funny rhymes and songs that a child will enjoy hearing read aloud.

My edition is illustrated by Nancy Ekholm Burkert, and I have to say that her drawings are some of the best I've ever seen in a children's book. I did enjoy the movie that came out a few days ago, but the book is better by far, so you might want to read the book first.

This is a guaranteed good time for any reluctant child reader. It's also a great read for adults.


Rating:
Summary: James and the Giant Peach
Review: Fabulus! Funny! All these things and more are consisted in the book. It is one of the best books I have ever read. Starting when james gets in the giant peach, it was one of the most funniest tales ever told. I am a violinest, so my favorite character had to be the cricket, especially when he was playing in a funny situation. I had to sit down and read the whole thing straight through in one day, it was so mind-catching! This in my opinion is Dahl's greatest book!

Rating:
Summary: Imaginative Classic for Children
Review: Roald Dahl has always been one of my favorite children's book authors. His books often are slightly dark, but triumphant in a way that remind you of Lemony Snicket and Harry Potter. In this tale, however, James is an orphan living with horrible aunts. He escapes his horrible existence when he climbs aboard a peach that keeps growing and growing. Delightful in that he gets to live in a peach, and everything in the peach including a worm gets to become James' size as well. Also recommended are Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events and the Emily Cobbs Collection.

Rating:
Summary: A very good by enrique
Review: One thing Roald Dahl has never had problems with is how to properly dispose of parental figures.

"It had started out well, with much laughing and shouting, and for the first few seconds, as the peach had begun to roll slowly forward, nobody had minded being tumbled about a little bit. And when it went BUMP!, and the Centipede had shouted, "That was Aunt Sponge!" and then BUMP! Again, and "That was Aunt Spiker!" there had been a tremendous burst of cheering all around."

The evil aunts of our hero, James, have thus been dispatched. Cruel to their nephew from the day they took custody of him, they are the mere speedbumps in the life of a Giant Peach, magically brought about to take James and his new-found friends to a new life in New York City.

The lovely thing about Dahl is that he makes the magically extraordinary into a quite normal thing for his characters. James meets with giant insects, befriends them, and rides in a enormous peach across the sea, battling sharks and seagulls until they come to rest on the spike of the Empire State Building.

There are a thousand parallels a thinking person could make with this book: the immigration of thousands of people from oppressive governments to the United States; the bucking of authority; the whole debacle with Elian Gonzales, if you're really good; and the painfully obvious connection with Harry Potter.

(I mean, really. The kid's name is James Henry Trotter. Don't make me keep going.)

But what I find most interesting about Dahl is that he continually dispatches adults in grotesque ways. This is, of course, endlessly endearing to children, who generally wish to discard their parents on the average of twice a week.

In many cases, the adults are evil and cruel, who make the children go without supper, television or sugar. They never listen, they never play, they don't laugh. They are sharp and greedy, and they resent the children in their lives.

Well, you're saying to yourself, of course those parents deserve to be run over by giant peaches, or fed disgusting poisonous brews by their charges, or blown up into giant blueberries.

But that's not the entire case in a Dahl book. Any adult is at his mercy - for James' parents have been nothing but good. And yet...in the third paragraph of the story:

"Then, one day, James's mother and father went to London to do some shopping, and there a terrible thing happened. Both of them suddenly got eaten up (in full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped by the London Zoo."

Tell me that there is not one person among you who does not read that paragraph with a small glimmer of fear in your heart. Being flattened by a giant peach suddenly seems tranquil and pleasant, if not downright sweet. A rhinoceros, on the other hand, is undoubtedly terribly messy and probably quite smelly as well.

Who gets the worst punishment here? Really - you've got to wonder if Dahl had some unresolved issues with his parents.

Regardless. It's a great book, very funny and enjoyable. The characters (save the adults, of course) are two-and-a-half dimensional and funny for all that. If you find yourself with a copy that has illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert, you're in luck in that regard as well.

Read it, cherish it, pass it on. But hide it from your kids, lest they start dreaming of rhinoceroses.