Check out my James and the Giant Peach book summary and review   that I created to help you understand the basics of this great book. James and the Giant Peach, known in Spanish under the titles James and the Giant Peach and James and the Giant Peach, is a children's novel by British writer Roald Dahl, first published in 1961 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. It would be adapted in Stop-Motion animation in 1996 by Henry Selick.

 

James and the Giant Peach book summary

James Henry Trotter is a boy who, up to the age of four, lives with his mum and dad in a nice little house by the sea. One bad day his parents go to London and are eaten by a rabid rhino who has escaped from the zoo. So James is left orphaned.

 He is entrusted to his aunts Spugna (short and fat) and Stecco (tall and very thin), who live in a kind of castle on a hill. The aunts are very bad and they call James by bad nicknames, they mistreat him, they insult him, they beat him for no reason and they make him work like a mule.

 They are also so lazy that they never let it out of their garden. James, therefore, does not even have a friend and is always alone. After three years with his aunts, he one day he asks them to go to the beach, but the hags, as usual, refuse and react abruptly. James is very sad and goes crying behind some old shrubs. From these, suddenly, an old man emerges and gives James a bag with moving green things inside.

 The old man tells him that if he drinks from a pitcher those little green things will happen to him wonderful, wonderful things. When the old man leaves, James thinks to himself that he must never lose sight of that bag and that for no reason in the world will he show it to his aunts on him. He starts running but stumbles and the little green things suddenly go underground. Sad and disappointed, James thinks such a great opportunity will never happen to him again.

The next day James and his aunts are in the garden. Aunt Spugna realizes that in the peach tree, of which she had never made a fruit or a flower, there is a peach. They are about to harvest it when Aunt Stecco notices that the fruit is growing at an astonishing speed. It seems to never stop growing but when it reaches the size of a house it stops.

Aunt Spugna, greedy as always, would like to savor it immediately but Aunt Stecco has a better idea than her: getting paid for people who come to see the fishing. So the next day James is locked in his room so as not to create problems and many people come to admire the extraordinary fruit.

At the end of the day, the baby is put out of the house until he cleans all the litter box and banana peels. He also goes to see the peach and finds a hole in the fruit wall and enters. After walking around for a while, he comes to a door, opens it and finds himself in a room. Here is an old green grasshopper, earthworm,


millipede, ladybug, spider, firefly, and silkworm that no one cares about because it always sleeps. These animals are as big as a person - they became big after swallowing at least one of those little green things. They introduce themselves to James, then Mrs. Spider makes hammocks for everyone out of her canvases and so they go to sleep.

James wakes up with a start: it's morning. The ladybug explains to him that as soon as the centipede has finished gnawing on the peach stem, she will detach from the tree and they will roll away from that spot. The millipede has razor-sharp teeth, wears forty-two booties (as many as its paws), and is a little mischievous. He always quarrels with the earthworm who is legless,

 blind and pessimistic. They begin to roll slowly but as they descend they pick up speed, crush their aunts to death and descend towards the city. They are thrown all over the inside of the fishing which, after a while, ends up in the sea. Then everyone is disappointed and, having no other food, they start eating fruit. After the night they see sharks approaching. James thinks it's over now, but he has an idea.

 He tells Mrs. Spider and the silkworm to weave many threads several kilometers long. The seagulls, attracted by the earthworm, come down and James ties them to the thread that connects them to the fishing. When he reaches the five hundred and second seagull the fruit takes off. They reach the height of the clouds. James sees the cloudmen preparing the hail for winter.

The centipede insults them and they throw hail on the fishermen. Beyond these they see others that color the rainbow: the peach hits us and breaks it. This time the cloud-men are throwing all kinds of objects at them. Dragged by the seagulls, the fishermen manage to escape and, at a certain point, the centipede realizes that America is below them.

 Then they gradually detach the birds and begin to descend, while the Americans, thinking the giant fruit is a bomb, call the police and firefighters. Meanwhile the peach sticks to the tip of the tallest building. James and the others leave and the boy tells the whole story.

 Eventually he and his friends become heroes to everyone. The centipede becomes vice president and manager of a shoe shop; the ladybird marries the fire chief; the silkworm and Mrs. Spider come together to make nylon threads for artists in balance; the earthworm advertises for a beauty center