ESL-Chat Blog: James and the Giant Peach

ESL-Chat Blog

James and the Giant Peach

After James Henry Trotter’s parents are tragically killed, he goes to live with his two horrible aunts, Spiker and Sponge. Life there is no fun, until James accidentally drops some magic crystals by the old peach tree and strange things start to happen. The peach at the top of the tree begins to grow, and before long it’s as big as a house. Inside, James meets a bunch of oversized friends—Grasshopper, Centipede, Ladybug, and more. With a snip of the stem, the peach starts rolling away, and the great adventure begins!

Here is the full text of the book:

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

Chapter 1 Until he was four years old, James Henry Trotter had a happy life. He lived peacefully with his mother and father in a beautiful house beside the sea. There were always plenty of other children for him to play with, and there was the sandy beach for him to run about on, and the ocean to paddle in. It was the perfect life for a small boy. Then, one day, James’s mother and father went to London to do some shopping, and there a terrible thing happened. Both of them suddenly got eaten up (in full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped from the London zoo. Now this, as you can well imagine, was a rather nasty experience for two such gentle parents. But in the long run it was far nastier for James then it was full them. Their troubles what all over in a jiffy. They were dead and gone in 35 seconds flat. Poor James, on the other hand, was still very much alive, and all at once he found himself alone and frightened in a vast unfriendly world. The lovely house by the seaside had to be sold immediately, and the little boy, carrying nothing but a small suitcase containing a pair of pyjamas and a toothbrush, sent away to live with his two aunts. Their names were Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, and I am sorry to say but they were both really horrible people. They were selfish and lazy and cruel, and right from the beginning they started beating poor James for almost no reason at all. They never called him by his real name, but always refer to him as ‘ you disgusting little beast’ or ‘you filthy nuisance’ or ‘you miserable creature’, and they certainly never gave him any toys to play with or any picture books to look at. His room was as bare as a prison cell. They lived - Aunt Sponge, Aunt Spiker, and now James as well - in a queer ramshackle house on the top of a high hill in the South of England. The Hill was so high that from almost anywhere in the garden James could look out and see for miles and miles cross a marvellous landscape of woods and fields; and on a very clear day, if he looked in the right direction, he could see a tiny grey dot far away the horizon, which was the house that he used to live in with his beloved father and mother. And just beyond that, he could see the ocean itself - a long thin streak of blackish blue, like a line of ink, beneath the rim of the Sky. But James was never allowed to go down off the top of that Hill. Neither Aunt Sponge not Aunt Spiker could ever be bothered to take him out herself, not even for a small walk or a picnic, and he certainly wasn’t permitted to go alone. ‘The nasty little beast will only get into mischief if he goes out of the garden,’ Aunt Spiker had said. And terrible punishments were promised him, such as being locked up in the cellar with the rats for a week, if even so much as dared to climb over the fence. The garden, which covered the whole of the top of the hill, was large and desolate, and the only tree in the entire place (apart from a clump of dirty laurel bushes at the far end) was an ancient peach tree that never gave any peaches. There was no swing, no seesaw, no sand pit, and no other children were ever invited to come up the hill to play with poor James. There wasn’t so much as a dog or a cat around to keep him company. And as time went on, he used to spend hours every day standing at the bottom of the garden, gazing wistfully at the lovely but forbidden world of woods, and fields and ocean that was spread out below him like a magic carpet. Chapter 2 After James Henry Trotter had been living with his aunts for three whole years there came a morning when something rather peculiar happened to him. And this thing, which as I say was only rather peculiar, soon caused a second thing to happened which was very peculiar. And then the very peculiar thing, in its own turn, caused a really fantastically peculiar thing to occur. It all started on a blazing hot day in the middle of summer. Aunt Sponge, Aunt Spike and James were all out in the garden. James had been put to work, as usual. This time he was chopping wood for the kitchen stove, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker were sitting comfortably in deck-chairs near by, sipping tall glasses of fizzy lemonade and watching him to see that he didn’t stop work for one moment. Aunt Sponge was enormously fat and very short. She had small piggy eyes, a sunken mouth, and one of those white flabby faces that looked exactly as though it had been boiled. She was like a great white soggy overboiled cabbage. Aunt Spiker, on the other hand, was lean and tall and bony, and she wore steel rimmed spectacles that fixed onto the end of her nose with a clip. She had a screeching voice and long wet narrow lips, and whenever she got angry or excited, little flecks of spit would come shooting out of her mouth as she talked. And there they sat, these two ghastly hags, sipping their drinks, and every now and again screaming at James to chop faster and faster. They also talked about themselves, each one saying how beautiful she thought she was. Aunt Sponge had a long-handled mirror on her lap, and she kept picking it up and gazing at her own hideous face. ‘I look and smell,’ Aunt Sponge declared ‘as lovely as a rose!’ Just feast your eyes upon my face, observe my shapely nose! Behold my heavenly silky locks! And if I take off both my socks You’ll see my dainty toes.’ ‘But don’t forget,’ Aunt Spiker cried, ‘how much your tummy shows!’ Aunt Sponge went red, Aunt Spiker said, ‘My sweet, you cannot win, Behold MY gorgeous curvy shape, my teeth, my charming grin! Oh, beauteous me! How I adore My radiant looks! And please ignore The pimple on my chin.’ ‘My dear old trout!’ Aunt Sponge cried out, ‘You’re only bones and skin!’ ‘Such loveliness as I possess can only truly shine In Hollywood!’ Aunt Sponge declared. ‘Oh, wouldn’t that be fine! I’d capture all the nations’ hearts! They’d give me all the leading parts! The stars would all resign!’ ‘I think you’d make,’ Aunt Spiker said, ‘a lovely frankenstien.’ Poor James was still slaving away at the chopping-block. The heat was terrible. He was sweating all over. His arm was aching. The chopper was a large blunt thing far too heavy for a small boy to use. And as he worked, James began thinking about all the other children in the world and what they might be doing at this moment, Some would be riding tricycles in their gardens. Some would be walking in cool wood and picking bunches of wild flowers. And all the little friends whom he used to know would be down by the seaside, playing in the wet sand and splashing around in the water... Great tears began oozing out of James’s eyes and rolling down his cheeks. He stopped working and leaned against the chopping blocks, overwhelmed by his own unhappiness. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Aunt Spiker screeched, glaring at him over the top of her steel spectacles. James began to cry. ‘Stop that immediately and get on with your work, you nasty little beast!’ Aunt Sponge ordered. ‘Oh, Auntie Sponge!’ James cried out. ‘And Auntie Spiker! Couldn’t we all – please – just for once – go down to the seaside on the bus? It isn’t very far – and I feel so hot and awful and lonely...’ ‘Why you lazy good-for nothing brute!’ Aunt Spiker shouted. ‘Beat him!’ cried Aunt Sponge. ‘I certainly will!’ Aunt Spiker snapped. She glared at James, and James looked back at her with large frightened eyes. ‘I shall beat you later on in the day when I don’t feel so hot,’ she said. ‘And now get out of my sight, you disgusting little worm, and give me some peace!’ James turned and ran. He ran off as fast as he could to the far end of the garden and hid himself behind that clump of dirty old laurel bushes that we mentioned earlier on. Then he covered his face with his hands and began to cry and cry.

Book information:
Reading age: 8+
Word count: 23843
Number of pages: 160
Year: 1961
Links: Amazon, Wikipedia, YouTube, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Common Sense Media, Lexile

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