James and the Giant Peach
Encyclopedia
James and the Giant Peach is a popular children's novel written in 1961 by British author Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer, fighter pilot and screenwriter.Born in Wales to Norwegian parents, he served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, in which he became a flying ace and intelligence agent, rising to the rank of Wing Commander...

. The original first edition published by Alfred Knopf featured illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert
Nancy Ekholm Burkert
Nancy Ekholm Burkert is an American artist and illustrator, first known for her 1961 illustrated book, the original edition of James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl...

. However, there have been various reillustrated versions of it over the years, done by Michael Simeon for the first British edition, Emma Chichester Clark, Lane Smith and Quentin Blake
Quentin Blake
Quentin Saxby Blake, CBE, FCSD, RDI, is an English cartoonist, illustrator and children's author, well-known for his collaborations with writer Roald Dahl.-Education:...

. It was adapted into a film of the same name
James and the Giant Peach (film)
James and the Giant Peach is a 1996 musical fantasy film directed by Henry Selick, based on the 1961 novel of the same name by Roald Dahl. It was produced by Tim Burton and Denise Di Novi. The film is a combination of live action and stop-motion animation....

 in 1996. The plot centers on a young English orphan
Orphan
An orphan is a child permanently bereaved of or abandoned by his or her parents. In common usage, only a child who has lost both parents is called an orphan...

 boy who enters a gigantic, magical peach
Peach
The peach tree is a deciduous tree growing to tall and 6 in. in diameter, belonging to the subfamily Prunoideae of the family Rosaceae. It bears an edible juicy fruit called a peach...

, and has a wild and surreal cross-world adventure with six anthropomorphic insect
Insect
Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

s he meets within the giant peach. Originally titled James and the Giant Cherry, Dahl changed it to James and the Giant Peach because a peach is "prettier, bigger and squishier" than a cherry
Cherry
The cherry is the fruit of many plants of the genus Prunus, and is a fleshy stone fruit. The cherry fruits of commerce are usually obtained from a limited number of species, including especially cultivars of the wild cherry, Prunus avium....

.

Because of the story's occasional macabre and potentially frightening content, it has become a regular target of the censors and is #56 on the American Library Association
American Library Association
The American Library Association is a non-profit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 62,000 members....

's top 100 list of most frequently challenged books.

Plot

James Henry Trotter, four years old, lives with his loving parents in a pretty and bright cottage by the sea in the south of England. James's world is turned upside down when, while on a shopping trip in London, his mother and father are devoured by a rhinoceros that had escaped from the zoo. James is forced to go and live with his two horrible aunts, Spiker and Sponge, who live on a high, desolate hill near the white cliffs of Dover
White cliffs of Dover
The White Cliffs of Dover are cliffs which form part of the British coastline facing the Strait of Dover and France. The cliffs are part of the North Downs formation. The cliff face, which reaches up to , owes its striking façade to its composition of chalk accentuated by streaks of black flint...

. For three years Spiker and Sponge physically and verbally abuse James, not allowing him to venture beyond the hill or play with other children. Around the house James is treated as a drudge, beaten for hardly any reason, improperly fed, and forced to sleep on bare floorboards in the attic.

One summer afternoon when he is crying in the bushes, James stumbles across a strange little man, who, mysteriously, knows all about James's plight and gives him a sack of tiny glowing-green crocodile tongues. The man promises that if James mixes the contents of the sack with a jug of water and ten hairs from his own head, the result will be a magic potion which, when drunk, will bring him happiness and great adventures. On the way back to the house, James trips and spills the sack onto the peach tree outside his home, which had previously never given fruit. The tree becomes enchanted through the tongues, and begins to blossom; indeed a certain peach grows to the size of a large house. The aunts discover this and make money off the giant peach while keeping James locked away. At night the aunts shove James outside to collect rubbish from the crowd, but instead he curiously ventures inside a juicy, fleshy tunnel which leads to the hollow stone in the middle of the cavernous fruit. Entering the stone, James discovers a band of rag-tag anthropomorphic insects, also transformed by the magic of the green tongues.

James quickly befriends the insect inhabitants of the peach, who become central to the plot and James' companions in his adventure. The insects loathe the aunts and their hilltop home as much as James, and they were waiting for him to join them so they can escape together. The Centipede bites through the stem of the peach with his powerful jaws, releasing it from the tree, and it begins to roll down the hill, squashing Spiker and Sponge flat in its wake. Inside the stone the inhabitants cheer as they feel the peach rolling over the aunts. The peach rolls through villages, houses, and a famous chocolate factory
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a 1964 children's book by British author Roald Dahl. The story features the adventures of young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of the eccentric chocolatier, Willy Wonka....

 before falling off the cliffs and into the sea. The peach floats in the English Channel
English Channel
The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...

, but quickly drifts away from civilization and into the expanses of the Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

. Hours later, not far from the Azores, the peach is attacked by a swarm of hundreds of sharks. Using the blind Earthworm as bait, the ever resourceful James and the other inhabitants of the peach lure over five hundred seagulls to the peach from the nearby islands. The seagulls are then tied to the broken stem of the fruit using spiderwebs from the Spider and strings of white silk from the Silkworm. The mass of seagulls lifts the giant peach into the air and away from the sharks, with no damage to the plant.

As the seagulls strain to get away from the giant peach, they merely carry it higher and higher, and the seagulls take the giant peach great distances. The Centipede entertains with ribald dirges to Sponge and Spiker, but in his excitement he falls off the peach into the ocean and has to be rescued by James. That night, thousands of feet in the air, the giant peach floats through mountain-like, moonlit clouds. There the inhabitants of the peach see a group of magical ghost-like figures living within the clouds, "Cloud-Men", who control the weather.

As the Cloud-Men gather up the cloud in their hands to form hailstones and snowballs to throw down to the world below, the loud-mouthed Centipede berates the Cloud-Men for making snowy weather in the summertime. Angered, an army of Cloud-Men appear from the cloud and pelt the giant peach with hail so fiercely and powerfully that the peach is severely damaged, with entire chunks taken out of it, and the giant fruit begins leaking its peach juice. All of this shrinks the peach somewhat, although because it is now lighter the seagulls are able to pull it quicker through the air. As the seagulls strain to get away from the Cloud-Men, the giant peach smashes through an unfinished rainbow the Cloud-Men were preparing for dawn, infuriating them even further. One Cloud-Man almost gets on the peach by climbing down the silken strings tied to the stem, but James asks the Centipede to bite through some of the strings. When he does a single freed seagull, to which the Cloud-Man is hanging from, is enough the carry him away from the peach as Cloud-Men are weightless.

As the sun rises, the inhabitants of the giant peach see the glimmering skyscrapers of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 peeking above the clouds. The people below see the giant peach suspended in the air by a swarm of hundreds of seagulls, and panic, believing it to be a floating, orange-coloured, spherical nuclear bomb. The military, police
New York City Police Department
The New York City Police Department , established in 1845, is currently the largest municipal police force in the United States, with primary responsibilities in law enforcement and investigation within the five boroughs of New York City...

, fire, and rescue services are all called out, and people begin running to air raid shelters and subway stations, believing the city is about to be destroyed. A huge passenger jet flies past the giant peach, almost hitting it, and severing the silken strings between the seagulls and the peach. The seagulls free, the peach begins to fall to the ground, but it is saved when it is impaled upon the tip of the Empire State Building
Empire State Building
The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark skyscraper and American cultural icon in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. It has a roof height of 1,250 feet , and with its antenna spire included, it stands a total of 1,454 ft high. Its name is derived...

. The people on the 86th floor observation deck at first believe the inhabitants of the giant peach to be monsters or Martians, but when James appears from within the skewered peach and explains his story, the people hail James and his insect friends as heroes. They are given a welcoming home parade, and James gets what he wanted for three long years - playmates in the form of millions of potential new childhood friends. The skewered, battered remains of the giant peach are brought down to the streets by steeplejacks, where its delicious flesh is eaten up by ten thousand children, all now James's friends. Meanwhile, the peach's other former residents, the anthropomorphic insects, all go on to find very interesting futures in the world of humans.

In the last chapter of the book, it is revealed that the giant hollowed-out stone which had once been at the center of the peach is now a mansion located in Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...

. James lives out the rest of his life in the giant peach stone, which becomes an open tourist attraction and the ever-friendly James has all the friends he has ever wanted.

Characters

  • James Henry Trotter - The protagonist of the book, James is a seven-year-old orphaned boy who is forced into the care of his repulsive and abusive aunts, Spiker and Sponge, after his parents are killed by a rhinocerous. He wants nothing more than to have friends and be happy, which his aunts deny him. James sees this as far worse than any abuse they give him. His wish is eventually granted, however, in the form of the magical, anthropomorphic insects he meets in the giant peach. By the end of his adventure, he gets more than he wished for in the form of millions of playmates in New York City. Something of a dreamer, James is, nonetheless, clever and ever-resourceful throughout his adventure in the giant peach, and his intuitive plans save his and his friends' lives on more than one occasion.

  • The Old Man - A friendly yet mysterious wizard who is only seen once, yet is ultimately behind all of magical occurrences in the book, and also starts the adventure when he gives James a bag full of magical gems. It is these magical items which enchant the giant peach and its insect inhabitants, allowing James to begin his surreal journey and escape his evil aunts in the process. The wizard is not seen again after his encounter with James. However in the 1996 re-printing of the book, with illustrations by Lane Smith, the mysterious old man can be seen in the final illustration hiding amongst the New York City crowd.

  • Aunt Spiker - A dominating, cruel, malicious, and thoroughly repulsive lady, who derives a sadistic pleasure in manipulating and tormenting young James, who she sees as nothing more than a slave. Spiker is described as tall and thin - almost emaciated - with steel glasses. Both she and her sister Sponge are vain, each singing praises of their imagined beauty while they are in fact repulsive, but each attacks the other's repulsiveness. James never hears either Aunt Spiker laugh out loud during his three years with them. She meets her end when she is crushed to death as the giant peach rolls over her. In the 1996 film, she and Sponge survive being crushed by the peach and pursue James to New York. However, James finally stands up to them and ties them up with the Spider's thread. The police then take them away.

  • Aunt Sponge - A lazy, greedy, selfish, and morbidly fat woman, and equally as cruel and repulsive as her sister Spiker. Sponge is more gluttonous, thinking of eating the peach while Spiker seizes upon the money-making opportunities it will bring. Sponge is more or less dominated by Aunt Spiker, but attempts to save her own life instead of Spiker when she sees the giant peach rolling towards her. Nonetheless they trip up over each other and meet the same end, also in the 1996 film she also has the same fate as her sister.

  • The Centipede - An anthropomorphic male centipede
    Centipede
    Centipedes are arthropods belonging to the class Chilopoda of the subphylum Myriapoda. They are elongated metameric animals with one pair of legs per body segment. Despite the name, centipedes can have a varying number of legs from under 20 to over 300. Centipedes have an odd number of pairs of...

    , depicted as a boisterous rascal with a good heart, he is perhaps James' closest friend among the insects, taking an almost brotherly role to the boy. He is generally optimistic and even brave yet also loud-mouthed and rash, which gets himself and his companions into some bad situations, but his powerful jaws also save them on a few occasions. It was the Centipede who set the peach in motion by biting through the stem which connected it to the peach tree. The Centipede has an ego for many things including being the only actual pest of the group and his number of legs (he claims to have a hundred, but as his nemesis the Earthworm points out, he actually has only forty-two). He often asks for help with putting on his many boots, or taking them off, or shining them. In the last chapter of the book and after the destruction of the peach, it is revealed that he becomes Vice-President-in-Charge-of-Sales of a high-class firm of boot and shoe manufacturers. In the 1996 film, like in the novel, Centipede is also an important role for James, but unlike the book, he has a Brooklyn accent and argues with Grasshopper rather than Earthworm. The film also implies he has feelings for the Spider, and at the end of the film he is seen running for mayor.

  • The Earthworm - An anthropomorphic male earthworm
    Earthworm
    Earthworm is the common name for the largest members of Oligochaeta in the phylum Annelida. In classical systems they were placed in the order Opisthopora, on the basis of the male pores opening posterior to the female pores, even though the internal male segments are anterior to the female...

     who is more or less enemies with the Centipede, with whom he frequently argues. The Earthworm is depicted as a much less physical character than the Centipede, and with a much more bleak and pessimistic outlook which causes much of the trouble between him and the more jovial Centipede. The Earthworm is paranoid and has an extreme phobia of birds
    Ornithophobia
    -Symptoms:Ornithophobia can cause the following symptoms: breathlessness, dizziness, excessive sweating, nausea, dry mouth, feeling sick, shaking, heart palpitations, inability to speak or think clearly, a fear of dying, becoming mad or losing control, or a full-blown anxiety attack.-In popular...

     - although being an Earthworm, this phobia is not unfounded. He is also blind (having no eyes, like any earthworm), and often imagines that things are worse than they really are. The Earthworm does however become an unwitting hero when he begrudgingly saves himself and the other inhabitants of the peach. They use him as bait to lure in over five hundred seagulls, which are then tied to the stem and used to hoist the peach out of the sea and away from sharks. The Earthworm is not without a warm, affectionate side; he is seen to get along well with James. After this the Earthworm becomes something of a celebrity and appears on commercials and on television. A newspaper cutting at the end of the 1996 movie adaptation shows the Earthworm in an advert as a smooth spokesman for skin cream, wearing Stevie Wonder
    Stevie Wonder
    Stevland Hardaway Morris , better known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and activist...

    -type blind glasses with two attractive women standing by.

  • The Old Green Grasshopper - An anthropomorphic male grasshopper
    Grasshopper
    The grasshopper is an insect of the suborder Caelifera in the order Orthoptera. To distinguish it from bush crickets or katydids, it is sometimes referred to as the short-horned grasshopper...

    , his personality has aspects of both the Centipede and the Earthworm, although he is generally more sophisticated (and certainly more optimistic than the Earthworm). The Old Green Grasshopper takes something of a fatherly role to James and is depicted as elderly, although he loves life more than the rest of the inhabitants of the peach and is a passionate musician, playing a violin
    Violin
    The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

     from his own legs and providing music for his companions. In the last chapter of the book and after the destruction of the peach, it is revealed that he becomes a member of the New York Symphony Orchestra
    New York Symphony Orchestra
    The New York Symphony Orchestra was founded as the New York Symphony Society in New York City by Leopold Damrosch in 1878. For many years it was a fierce rival to the older Philharmonic Symphony Society of New York. It was supported by Andrew Carnegie who built Carnegie Hall expressly for the...

     where his playing is greatly admired. In the 1996 film, his violin is an actual violin however. His career is the most like the novel next to the Glowworm, as all the other careers of the insects are vastly different.

  • The Ladybird - A good-natured, motherly anthropomorphic female ladybird who takes care of James as if he were her son. She explains that the more black spots a ladybird has on the red shell, the more respectable and intelligent they are, and having nine spots, she is therefore very respectable and intelligent. In the last chapter of the book and after the destruction of the peach, it is revealed that the Ladybird, who had been haunted all her life by the fear that her house was on fire and her children all gone, married the head of the New York Fire Department and lived happily ever after with him. In the 1996 film, the Labybug becomes a well-recommended maternity nurse, and a newspaper clipping has the headline "Dr Ladybird delivers 1000th baby: Expectant mothers love Ladybird: Baby boom kids in expert hands", and tells that she is pioneering new techniques.

  • Miss Spider - An anthropomorphic female spider
    Spider
    Spiders are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, and chelicerae with fangs that inject venom. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all other groups of organisms...

     not unlike the Ladybug in personality and generally friendly and decent in manner, described by Dahl as having "a large, black and murderous-looking head, which to a stranger was probably the most terrifying of all". She has particular resentment towards Spiker and Sponge - especially Sponge, who is responsible for the cruel deaths of Miss Spider's father and grandmother. Miss Spider makes hammock
    Hammock
    A hammock is a sling made of fabric, rope, or netting, suspended between two points, used for swinging, sleeping, or resting. It normally consists of one or more cloth panels, or a woven network of twine or thin rope stretched with ropes between two firm anchor points such as trees or posts....

    s using her webs for the rest of the insects to sleep in (the Earthworm uses a much longer bed than the rest). Her webs are very strong and it is her webs, along with silk from the Silkworm, which tie the flock of seagulls to the stem of the giant peach and enable it to be lifted out of the sea and into the air, escaping the sharks. In the 1996 film, Miss Spider is a more youthful, sultry version of her counterpart in the novel, and opens a nightclub called the Spider Club at the end of the movie. It is also shown that she may have feelings for the Centipede.

  • The Glowworm - A six-legged, anthropomorphic female glowworm
    Glowworm
    Glowworm, or glow worm, is the common name for various groups of insect larvae and adult larviform females that glow through bioluminescence. They may sometimes resemble worms, but all are insects .-Classification:Major families are:* Lampyridae , found around the world...

    , she quietly hangs from the ceiling in the hollowed-out stone at the center of the giant peach and provides lighting for the interior of the fruit in the form of a bright green bioluminescence
    Bioluminescence
    Bioluminescence is the production and emission of light by a living organism. Its name is a hybrid word, originating from the Greek bios for "living" and the Latin lumen "light". Bioluminescence is a naturally occurring form of chemiluminescence where energy is released by a chemical reaction in...

    . An incessantly sleepy character, she doesn't speak often and is slow to move. Her ending is exactly the same in the 1996 film, where she saves New York from an enormous electric bill by illuminating the Statue of Liberty's torch.

  • The Silkworm - A female anthropomorphic Silkworm. Often asleep, a possible reference to hibernation, she helps Miss Spider to make ropes for the seagulls. Silkworm does not appear in the 1996 film as a part of the Peach crew, but instead in James' dream sequence. Her appearance somewhat represents James.

  • Rhinoceros - A mad rhino that escaped from a zoo
    Zoo
    A zoological garden, zoological park, menagerie, or zoo is a facility in which animals are confined within enclosures, displayed to the public, and in which they may also be bred....

     and killed James' parents. The film uses the rhino as a recurring theme, mainly a symbol of James' fear and how he overcomes it. The film displays the rhino as a monsterous cloud-like creature, filling in for the absent Cloud-Men.

  • Cloud Men - Are minor antagonists, who throw rocks and supplies at the peach after Centipede taunts them. They never appear in the film as a plot device, arguably replaced by a scene with skeleton pirates, but two cloud men appear dancing together in the "Family" number of the film.

Film version

Although Roald Dahl turned down more than one offer to make an animated film of James and the Giant Peach during his lifetime, his widow, Liccy Dahl, consented to let a film adaptation
Film adaptation
Film adaptation is the transfer of a written work to a feature film. It is a type of derivative work.A common form of film adaptation is the use of a novel as the basis of a feature film, but film adaptation includes the use of non-fiction , autobiography, comic book, scripture, plays, and even...

 be made in conjunction with Disney in the mid-1990s. It was directed by Henry Selick
Henry Selick
Henry Selick is an American stop motion director, producer and writer who is best known for directing The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and Coraline...

 and produced
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...

 by Denise Di Novi
Denise Di Novi
Denise Di Novi is an American film producer.-Personal life:When she was three years old, Denise and her family moved to Los Angeles from New York, where her father Gene Di Novi - a musician - made music for the TV shows of Danny Thomas, Dick Van Dyke and Andy Griffith. Prior to that, Gene worked...

 and Tim Burton
Tim Burton
Timothy William "Tim" Burton is an American film director, film producer, writer and artist. He is famous for dark, quirky-themed movies such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet...

, who both also had worked on the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas
The Nightmare Before Christmas
The Nightmare Before Christmas, often promoted as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, is a 1993 stop motion musical fantasy film directed by Henry Selick and produced/co-written by Tim Burton. It tells the story of Jack Skellington, a being from "Halloween Town" who opens a portal to...

 which was also a Disney project. The movie is a combination
Combination
In mathematics a combination is a way of selecting several things out of a larger group, where order does not matter. In smaller cases it is possible to count the number of combinations...

 of live action
Live action
In filmmaking, video production, and other media, the term live action refers to cinematography, videography not produced using animation...

 and stop-motion due to costs. It was narrated by Pete Postlethwaite
Pete Postlethwaite
Peter William "Pete" Postlethwaite, OBE, was an English stage, film and television actor.After minor television appearances including in The Professionals, Postlethwaite's first success came with the film Distant Voices, Still Lives in 1988. He played a mysterious lawyer, Mr...

 (who also played the wizard). The film was released on April 12, 1996
1996 in film
Major releases this year included Scream, Independence Day, Fargo, Trainspotting, The English Patient, Twister, Mars Attacks!, Jerry Maguire and a version of Evita starring Madonna.-Events:...

.

There are numerous changes between the plot of the film and the plot of the book, although the film was generally well received. Liccy Dahl said that, "I think Roald would have been delighted with what they did with James." Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman is an American film critic for Entertainment Weekly, a position he has held since the magazine's launch in 1990. From 1981–89, he worked at the Boston Phoenix....

 of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

 gave the film a positive review, praising the animated part, but calling the live-action segments "crude." The movie was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score (by Randy Newman
Randy Newman
Randall Stuart "Randy" Newman is an American singer-songwriter, arranger, composer, and pianist who is known for his mordant pop songs and for film scores....

). It won Best Animated Feature Film at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival
Annecy International Animated Film Festival
The Annecy International Animation Film Festival was created in 1960 and takes place at the beginning of June in the town of Annecy, France. Initially occurring every two years, the festival became annual in 1998...

.
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