James and the Giant Peach

James and the giant peach is a dark and beautiful children's fantasy. James is an orphan boy who is forced to live with his two evil aunts who make him do all chores all day, beat him,verbally abuse him, and hardly ever feed him. One day James' luck changes when he finds a bag of small magical beans. James accidently lets the magical beans loose and they dig into the soil. The next morning James and his aunts wake to find that there is a magical peach growing in their lawn. The peach continues growing until it is as big as a house and even bigger. The aunts begin to charge admission and people come from all over to see the peach. One night James is so hungry he eats his way into the peach where he finds a group of bugs that are as big as he is. The bugs and James disconnect the peach from the tree, and it becomes their vehicle for adventures. This book is sometimes band for its descriptions of how James is treated by his aunts, and the description of how they are killed by the giant peach. I found it to be a really fun book to read, and I enjoyed the darker parts of the book very much. I thought it added to the depth of the book. 

A good way to use this book in a library setting could be to center it around a program about bugs. 

PROFESSIONAL BOOK REVIEW FROM www.acsu.buffalo.edu 

James and the Giant Peach is a fantastical and otherworldly journey into the imagination of Roald Dahl. The book is a classic read for late-elementary aged readers, a tale of adventure and friendship and a child hero beating the odds to find the life he always wanted. I loved this book as a child, and the world of Roald Dahl continues to feed my inner-child! The story of James is classic Dahl, in that he is a child mistreated and overlooked by the rest of society, whose heart of gold still survives the neglect and disrespect he receives at the hands of adults. This misfit quality is often the starting point for Dahl characters (think of Matilda Wormwood and Charlie Buckett in addition to James), and it would seem that because the rest of the world does not believe in their potential, the magical spirit that Dahl threads through his stories takes hold of these children and throws them into extraordinary circumstances that will reveal the child as ultimate hero in the end.

Dahl, R., & Smith, L. (1996).James and the giant peach: a children's story. New York, N.Y.: Penguin Group.