James and the Giant Peach (Read & Respond) (French's Acting Editions)

by Roald Dahl, Wendy Cooling, and Quentin Blake

Nancy Eckholm Burkert (Illustrator)

Join James as he escapes from his horrible aunts and sets off inside the peach on his wonderful adventures. This dramatization of Roald Dahl's hugely popular book can be staged in school, acted out at home or simply read together by a group of friends. With suggestions for staging, props and lighting.

Roald Dahl died in 1990 but his books continue to be worldwide bestsellers.

Richard George was an American elementary school teacher when he adapted James and the Giant Peach as a school play. Roald Dahl loved it and wrote an introduction.

• ISBN10: 0140306234
• ISBN13: 9780140306231
• Publish Date: 30 August 1973 (first published November 1967)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 6 December 1991
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Puffin Books
• Edition: New edition
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 112
• Language: English

Reviews

[jnkay01]

Taika Waititi's readings on the Roald Dahl YouTube channel have been a charming delight during lock-down.

I vaguely remember reading this as a kid and I didn't like it much. Reading it again - I still don't like it. It was alright but nothing much happens and there was no real connection to the characters. I just didn't care what happened to any of them. Still, I'm not the target audience. This book was weird though, the language was more sophisticated than most kids books use and it was pretty blunt - I mean the aunts get squished and are left "lifeless". Doesn't particularly seem kid friendly. 1.5 stars. It's readable and I did like the poems. Just not my cup of tea.

[Stephanie]

3.5 Stars

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

While Roald Dahl was a staple of my childhood, I really don’t remember reading James and the Giant Peach. I do remember the Tim Burton film, however, and that was a childhood staple along with the adaptations of Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. My copy of James and the Giant Peach is not a beloved childhood copy, but an edition I picked up at library book sale when I was in high school and treasured simply because Roald Dahl’s imagination was informative of my childhood reading.

This is all to day – I’m sure I read James and the Giant Peach as a youngling, but I simply don’t remember it.

Revisiting this book as an adult is… interesting. It’s not charming like The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me or mortifyingly bad like Fantastic Mr. Fox. This book is a bit longer than both of those and written for slightly older audiences. There’s very little character development, but it retains the weird and fascinating edge of Dahl’s other work. I’d say that James and the Giant Peach is a decent story, but I can see why childhood-me didn’t fall in love with it.

James is given a wonderful, magical gift by a creepy old man and while this plays against all the warnings parents give their kids, James is fictional and the glowing green things are an interesting temptation. He’s an orphan, and his aunts are two stereotypical bullies, so you can’t particularly blame James for ignoring Stranger Danger and accepting a little magic, even when things don’t go according to plan.

At this point in the review, I think I’d just like to offer a blanket statement for any of Roald Dahl’s books. These teach terrible lessons to children. They are magical and delightful, but there’s a who lot of children running away with strangers and eating things they oughtn’t and breaking and entering, etc. If you’re looking for any sort of wholesome children’s story, probably steer clear of Dahl. That said, he had a fantastic imagination.

What follows the initial mishap with the boiled crocodile tongues / glowy green things is a transatlantic journey with unlikely companions. There are always little mishaps to make the journey interesting, and we do get to learn a little about a few of the leveling companions – earthworms and centipedes and grasshoppers in particular. Each bug riding the peach has its little moment, but no character (save maybe the Centipede and the Earthworm) are allowed any real character development… and I include James, our protagonist, in that statement. James and the Giant Peach is more about the journey than the people journeying.

There are moments when characters break into verse as well, so if you enjoy poetry in your children’s chapter books, then you’ll enjoy this as well. For myself, I don’t care for it. In particular, it was used in James and the Giant Peach to review recent situations and served mostly as filler text, which was a bit blah to me. I think that’s the best way for me to illustrate my feelings about this book – it was fine in general, but it wasn’t my favorite of his works and I’m no overly attached to it.

A note particular to my edition – I have a Puffin Classics edition that uses the original art by Nancy Ekholm Burkert. While I can appreciate the skill of an artist, I have to admit that the drawings in this edition are creepy. She doesn’t draw eyes… just black holes, making James appear a bit demonic? I think it would have freaked me out when I was a kid.