James and the Giant Peach

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Summary: James And The Jiant Peach
Review: A great book you should read is James and the Giant Peach. This is an adventurebook. My favorite charactor is the centipede.
This book is about a boy named James Henry Trotter. One sad day, his parents are eaten by a rhino that escaped from the zoo. He has to live with his two most hated aunts, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker. The make him their slave. One day, he sees an old man. He gives James a bag of magic bugs. He trips and they go everywhere. They go into the ground and get into the roots of the dead peach tree.The tree grows a giant peach and James goes inside a hole in it. He meets a centipede, a grasshopper, a spider, a ladybug, a glow worm, a silk worm and a earth worm. They are as big as him. They roll down the hill and squish the nasty aunts. James and his new friends meet sharks and cloud men.
I recommend this book to anyone who likes adventure books.

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Summary: James and the Giant Peach, A Children's Novel
Review: As a 5th grader in my elementary school, I read James and the Giant Peach cover to cover 5 times, out of my own will.

Roald Dahl's fiction work in this novel is fantastic, as well as fascinating. This selection describes the story of James, a young boy and his trip across the Atlantic Ocean, on a huge peach! James has several encounters including a shark attack, being attacked by cloud men, and having a run in with a group of Cloud Men, who are painting a rainbow.

It all begins when James parents are violently scarfed down by two rhinos on the escape from the London Zoo, and poor James is sent to live with his Aunts, Spiker and Sponge. While working in a garden, James is approached by a fearful looking creature, much like a goblin, who gives him several special wormlike organisms in a plastic bag. With the right recipe, these organisms spell H-E-A-V-E-N for James, yet he drops them onto the ground...

As an extraordinary children's bedtime novel, I rate this book Five Stars.

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Summary: A review of James And The Giant Peach (Alice Z)
Review: During early December, I read a very interesting book named "James and the Giant Peach" that I would like to recommend. It is about a boy's life from ages 4~8. His parents were nice to him and they lived along the seashore peacefully with lots of other children, but then something terrible happened. During a bright, sunny day, while his parents were going shopping, an angry rhinoceros escaped from the London Zoo and ate them up alive. Poor James was forced to live with his nasty aunts doing all the dirty work while they were relaxing. One day, James met a stranger who gave him magic crocodile tounges. But Oops! James dropped it near the peach tree and a peach started to grow. While James was picking up garbage near the enormus peach the next night, he spotted a hole in the peach. What was that hole? Read this book to find out.

I really enjoyed this book because it is kind of a fantasy and adventure story. It really takes you inside with all the exaggeration. For example, there are really exciting things like the cloudmen, the sharks, landing on the Empire State Building and living in a pit. I'd like to recommend this book to any fantasy or adventure lover.

My favorite part was when Aunt Spiker & Aunt Sponge got flattened like pancakes when the paech rolled on them because they were so mean to James and so this is like a lesson to them and poor James' revenge. My least favorite part was when James had to help centipede take off all 42 shoes tied in really tangled knots for 2 hours until he could sleep.
How did the peach grow so big? How did James and the creatures make friends and communicate? How did the peach roll over the nasty aunts and not die? What was it like to live inside a peach? Read this fabulous story and find out.

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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!

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Summary: Cool Book
Review: James and the Giant Peach was Roald Dahl's first book he wrote for children and I must say that this book was superb. It was funny, had really great characters, and had a really enthralling story. The book is about a boy named James that meets an old man and James gets these green beady things that can change his life forever. While walking to the house to use the beads he trips and they get into the soil. he thinks all of his hopes are up but they're not. A peach grows from the peach tree that never ever grew a peach and it gets bigger and bigger until it reaches about the size of a car. Then James gets inside the peach where he meets insects that tell the story how they got the beads and thats how they got in the peach and the peach got big. But then the peach starts rolling downhill until it reaches the sea and falls in. They come out and see sharks eating the peach so they have segulls pull them and they fly all over the Atlantic Ocean until they reach New York. That's the most I'll tell you except READ THIS BOOK. It is so good. Adults and children will love this book. Read it!

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Summary: This book made a reader out of me!
Review: My third grade teacher (bless you Mr. Collins) read this book chapter-by-chapter to my class. I couldn't wait for each day's installment. This book is one that I distinctly remember from my childhood as a formative influence. Parents, if you want to raise an imaginative reader, this is the book for you! I am now an adult who is a voracious and eclectic reader thanks in part to this book. I plan on reading it to my own children someday.

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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.



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Summary: Giant-Sized Adventure for Enormous Fun!
Review: Researchers constantly find that reading to children is valuable in a variety of ways, not least of which are instilling a love of reading and improved reading skills. With better parent-child bonding from reading, your child will also be more emotionally secure and able to relate better to others. Intellectual performance will expand as well. Spending time together watching television fails as a substitute.

To help other parents apply this advice, as a parent of four I consulted an expert, our youngest child, and asked her to share with me her favorite books that were read to her as a young child. James and the Giant Peach was one of her picks.

The book is a wonderful witty exploration of the marvels of imagination as applied to nature. Every reader will look much more closely at the world around after finding so many interesting details to consider.

The story begins when James Henry Trotter was about four years old. He had been living happily with his parents in England. One day, they went shopping and were eaten by an angry runaway rhinoceros which had escaped from the London zoo. As a result, their wonderful home was sold and James Henry Trotter came to live with his decidedly dastardly aunts Sponge and Spiker. They mistreated and overworked James Michael Trotter much like the abuse that Cinderella experienced at the hands by her evil stepmother and stepsisters.

Poor James! He has become the most unhappy, lonely, and woebegone orphan in the world.

But his luck changes when a mysterious old man gives him some magic, in the form of wriggling little green things to put into water and drink. Then their magic will help James. "Whoever they meet first, be it bug . . . or tree, that will be . . . who gets the full power of their magic!" James is told to hold the bag tight and to hurry. But, alas, he trips and the contents of the bag spill out underneath the old barren peach tree in the yard. Quickly, the magic seeps into the ground as James scrambles to retrieve it.

Soon, the aunts spot a peach growing in the very top of the tree. And it keeps growing . . . and growing . . . and growing . . . and growing . . . until it's the size of a house. They concoct a scheme to get rich by charging admission to see the peach, while James is to stay out all night cleaning up the mess the visitors have made. Tired, he decides to look at the giant peach. He notices a hole, like a giant worm's tunnel in the bottom. He climbs in. What he finds leads him on one of the most amazing journeys that any 7 year old has ever had or imagined!

This story has a lot in common with Alice in Wonderland. Everything that happens prior to going through the hole in the peach is but a preamble for the role reversal in which the peach and the insects inside of it are made to be enormous. This is like Alice drinking the potion that makes her small. Yet the rest of the world stays its normal size. Basically, this is an encouragement to take the qualities of peaches and insects more seriously by exaggering their significance. You will learn a lot, and be charmed by how the information builds the story.

Along the way, Mr. Dahl asks some very interesting questions:

How do grasshoppers make sounds?

What benefits do earthworms, lady bugs, and spiders bring for people?

How many legs does a centipede have?

He also provides many fantastic explanations of natural processes, introducing cloud-men to make rainbows, hail, and rain. These are great fun and help develop the story.

Whenever James seeks to create a balance in and with nature, things work just fine. A good example is that he uses filament spun by the silk worm and the spider to tie to gulls who carry the peach aloft over the ocean. Harness just the right number of gulls and progress is smooth. Harness too few, and nothing happens. That subliminal message is a valuable one for every reader.

The ending is particularly fine for expanding on the concept of how each being's peculiarities can be strengths. The book appears to draw on The Ugly Duckling story for inspiration. Even James' loneliness serves him well, in the end.

I also like this story for its potential to inspire writers. Walk into your kitchen, and pick up the first item you see. Then build a story around it, like Mr. Dahl has done with this peach. If you do this with a child, you will both be the richer for the experience.

After you are done enjoying the story and writing your own, I also suggest that you think about ways that you can live in greater harmony with nature. What aspects of your life would you have to change? How could you be as useful to nature as the earthworm is to the farmer? What gratifications would you feel from doing this? Spring will be coming in a few months, and the opportunity to do some organic gardening using the materials in your own yard will be there. Plan to get closer to nature, and make notes about what you observe every day. You will enjoy great peace as a result. If you haven't read Thoreau recently, this would be a good time to do so.

Have a peachy time!

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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.

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Summary: James and the Giant Peach
Review: When I read James and the Giant peach for the first time I loved it! it was adventurous and exciting! I loved how the writer made the creatures so interesting. Also she made the aunts look evil as was explainedin the book. I just wanted to reach in the book and yell at them! The book was kind-off mythical when james got to the cloud men. I could read that book over and over again and I would never get bored!