The Book That Made Me Love Reading
Written: Jun 27 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Imaginative plot and engaging characters.
Cons: None.
The Bottom Line: Your kid will love it!
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| a_r_egerton's Full Review: Roald Dahl - James and the Giant Peach: The Book a... |
James and the Giant Peach is the first book that I'd gotten excited about as a kid. I'd read other books before this one, but they did not leave the impression on me that James did.
The title character is orphaned when four years old and is consequently sent to live with two nasty aunts, who make him do chores all day long and never let him see his friends. James lives in this dreary fashion for three years, until a strange old man gives him a bag filled with a magical substance that the old man assures him will help him. James, alas, drops the bag at the base of an old peach tree that had not produced fruit in years.
The tree produces a single gigantic peach that is home to several equally gigantic bugs. When James is locked out of the house for the night by his cruel aunts, he investigates the peach and finds the tunnel to the peach pit that one of the bugs had apparently made.
James is initially alarmed by these creatures, since they are all at least his size. To make matters worse, they are discussing the fact that they are all hungry when James first arrives, and poor James assumes that he's on the menu. The bugs quickly reassure James of their kind intentions, and introduce themselves to him: Old-Green-Grasshopper, Miss Spider, Centipede, Earthworm, Ladybug, Glowworm, and Silkworm.
James' new friends have no more love for his aunts than he does, and decide to leave the aunts' dreary hilltop abode. The Centipede gnaws through the stem, and after a VERY bumpy ride down a large hill, the group find themselves in the Atlantic Ocean headed who knows where....
Dahl was a poet as well as a prose writer, and James has its share of poems, many of which are sung by the extroverted Centipede (who was my favorite character when I was seven). The aunts, Sponge and Spiker, get to recite a poem praising their (imaginary) beauty and exposing their (real) conceit.
The bugs are an engaging and appealing bunch. Two, Silkworm and Glowworm are less well developed and less memorable than the others, and seem almost to exist simply for their functions: to provide silk and light, respectively. But the other five make appealing, if sometimes quarrelsome, traveling companions. The Old-Green-Grasshopper is the elder statesman of the group; he is calm, dignified, and a talented musician, and he sometimes acts as a father figure to James. The Centipede is a rampant extrovert who divides his time between entertaining people and driving them nuts, while Earthworm is the group pessimist. He and Centipede squabble all the time. Both the Ladybug and Miss Spider are kind, maternal types.
Some of my fellow Epinionators have mentioned that the book contains some potentially offensive dialogue, and rightly point out that Dahl was British and that what is offensive to Americans might not be offensive to Brits. Another thing to consider is that the book was first published in the early 1960's, and that social mores have changed since then.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
a_r_egerton
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Member: Ann Egerton
Location: Baltimore, MD
Reviews written: 62
Trusted by: 21 members
About Me:
Graduate student of biology at Towson University. I'll write about practically anything.
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