James and the giant peach door Roald Dahl

1. About the book
   Title: James and the giant peach

   Author: Roald Dahl

   Number of pages: 160

   Level of the book: C

2. Which requirements does a book need to have according to you?
   – An attractive book cover, so that I can take it from the bookshelf and have a look at it.

   – A good and clear story at the back of the book, which makes me curious to read it.

   – A theme that interests me, some elements that I recognize (if I open the book and read some lines quickly) from my real life or just some funny things which makes me want to read the book.  

    

3. Why did you choose this book?
   The book itself has some funny elements. Just when I took the book from the bookshelf, there was a very big fruit on the cover, which made me curious. I really wondered what this story could be about. So I read the story at the back, which was clear to me. Then I took a quick look in the book and the story at the beginning was about a boy which wanted to make some adventures and he wanted to explore something, which interests me.

 

4/5. Describe the characters and their connection with the other characters.

Name of character

Connection with main/ other characters

Introduction/description character

James

Main character

Intelligent but lonely eleven-year-old boy who can be very curious 

Aunt Sponge

Takes ‘care’ of James

Very cruel, selfish and fat woman which is too lazy to do the household

Aunt Spike

Lives together with Aunt Sponge and James and also takes ‘care’ of James.

Very cruel, selfish and thin woman who is also very lazy

Centipede

One of James’ best friends,

he hates the Earthworm though he likes the rest of the creatures on the peach

Optimistic, brave but sometimes a bit mean to the Earthworm

Earthworm

A good friend of James, he hates the Centipede but likes the rest of the crea-

tures on the peach

Always a bit more afraid than the others, but he is obedient when he has to do something scary

Old Green Grasshopper

A grasshopper who is a good friend of James and also of the other creatures on the peach

Old but wise grasshopper which gives good advice because he has a lot of knowledge

 

Miss Spider

One of James’ female friends as well as from all the other creatures on the peach

She looks scary, but she actually is friendly and quiet

Miss Ladybug

A good female friend of all creatures on the peach

Very kind and takes good care of everybody on the peach

 

   

4/5.

 

6.    Write a summary
James Henry Trotter was a boy who lived happily with his parents by the time he was 4 years old. Together they lived in a pretty house by the sea of the Southern part of England. But everything changed when all of a sudden an escaped rhinoceros ate both of James’ parents, when they were shopping in London. James had to live with his cruel aunts, Aunt Spiker and Aunt Sponge. The aunts abused James, he had to do all of the work and the aunts did nothing because they were too cruel and lazy to do it. And when James was finished, they would beat James for no reason and give him almost no food. James felt really lonely. He wanted to play games with children who were as old as himself. One day, when he was sitting nearby the fence. An old man appears and he seems to know about all of the problems of James, and he even seems to have the solution. The man got a bag with little green glowing things, which are crocodile tongues. He says that marvellous things will happen to the thing that will eat these crocodile tongues. So when James tries to get into the house     again, he falls down and the crocodile tongues fall as well, near the peach tree which has never given

any peaches. An enormous peach starts to grow from the tree, as big as a house. The aunts make money of it by showing it to the people in the surrounding areas and they keep James locked in the house. At night the aunts send James to collect the rubbish which the crowd (which came to have a look at the peach) had left. But instead he was very curious to know about the peach. When he walks around it he discovers a tunnel, which leads to the centre of the peach, where he meets unimaginably big insects, which had become very big because of the magic tongues. James was terrified when he saw them but very fast they became friends. The insects also like James, because they had been waiting for him so they could escape from the hill, the creepy aunts and the scary house. The Centipede breaks the stem of the peach and then they start rolling off the hill. They are very excited because they finally escaped. As they rolled through villages, houses and over aunt Sponge and Spike, they finally float into the Atlantic Ocean. All they could see was water, water and again water. But when they looked down they saw a group of sharks. The sharks were bouncing into the peach, and the insects were freaking out because they did not know what to do. They look at James hopefully. James looked down to the sharks, and when he looked up he saw seagulls. He had an idea but then he thinks it is impossible. But it’s the only thing they can do. So with the help of the Silkworm, Miss Spider was making strings as fast as she could, then James would tie the strings around the bodies of the seagulls and then he would tie the seagulls to the stem of the peach. When hundreds of seagulls were tied around the stem, the peach, including all of the inhabitants, was lifted up. They escaped from the sharks. Because the seagulls wanted to get away, they lifted the peach up higher and higher, until they reached quite weird looking clouds. They looked different than the regular ones. Then they discover the Cloud Men which are on the clouds. They were taller than humans, and they were all white. These men control the weather. They have hailstone and snow supplies, and they decide whether there’s sun or rain. When the Centipede was trying to make fun of them, they attacked the peach with hailstones. The hailstones damaged the peach, some parts broke off, which made the peach lighter, so the seagulls lifted it up and forward even more quickly. They crashed into an unfinished rainbow which the Cloud Men were painting. One Cloud Man almost reached the peach, but they escaped again. When the sun came up, James became really excited. He remembered he would go to New York City with his parents, but then they died. And now New York was right in front of him. The peach was not flying anymore, and James wondered: ‘Where was the Empire State Building?’. Well, they were right on top of it. With the help of the fire brigade the insects and James came down. James gets what he wanted: with hundreds of other children they play around the peach and he played with them. James and the insects were seen as heroes. James stayed in New York while the aunts were trying to get the peach back, put they did not succeed. The insects get all major functions in the world of humans.