For the 1996 film adaptation, see James and the Giant Peach (film). For the musical adaptation, see James and the Giant Peach (musical).
James and the Giant Peach
First edition (US)
Author
Roald Dahl
Illustrator
Nancy Ekholm Burkert (first US edition)
Michael Simeon (first UK edition)
Emma Chichester Clark (1990 UK edition)
Quentin Blake (1995 edition)
Lane Smith (1996 US edition)
Jordan Crane (2011 50th anniversary edition)
Country
United Kingdom
Language
English
Genre
Children's novel, Fantasy
Published
1961
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Original language English
Publisher
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Publication date
17 July 1961
Media type
Hardcover
Pages
160
OCLC
50568125
Dewey Decimal
[Fic] 21
LC Class
PZ8.D137 James 2002
James and the Giant Peach is a popular children's novel written in 1961 by British author Roald Dahl. The first edition, published by Alfred Knopf, featured illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert. There have been re-illustrated versions of it over the years, done by Michael Simeon (for the first British edition), Emma Chichester Clark, Lane Smith and Quentin Blake. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1996 (with Smith being a conceptual designer) which was directed by Henry Selick, and a musical in 2010.
The plot centres on a young English orphan boy who enters a gigantic, magical peach, and has a wild and surreal cross-world adventure with seven magically altered garden bugs he meets. Dahl was originally going to write about a giant cherry, but changed it to James and the Giant Peach because a peach is "prettier, bigger and squishier than a cherry."[1][2] Because of the story's occasional macabre and potentially frightening content, it has become a regular target of censors.[3][4]
Dahl dedicated the book to his six-year-old daughter Olivia, who died from complications of measles only a year after the book was published.[5]
American novelist Bret Easton Ellis has cited James and the Giant Peach as his favourite children's book:
It changed my life. My aunt read it to me, my sisters and my three cousins in two sittings over vacation at a beach house when I was about six. The idea that the world was meaner, crueller, more absurd and fantastical than anything that picture books had previously showed me made a real impact. That was the moment I couldn’t go back [as a reader].[6]
^"Roald Dahl Fact Sheet: Puffin play ground". Puffin Books
^Clarie Heald (11 June 2005) "Chocolate doors thrown open to Dahl", BBC News.
^The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–1999. American Library Association.
^"Why is China banning Winnie the Pooh and other foreign picture books?" Newsweek.
^Gander, Kashmira (30 January 2019). "'In 12 Hours She Was Dead': Read Roald Dahl's Heartbreaking Letter to Anti-Vaxxers After His Daughter Died From Measles". Newsweek. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
^Cummins, Anthony (15 January 2023). "Bret Easton Ellis: 'James and the Giant Peach changed my life'". The Guardian.
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