James and the Giant Peach

by Roald Dahl

UNTIL HE WAS FOUR years old, James Henry Trotter had 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 than it was for them. Their troubles were all over in a jiffy. They were dead and gone in thirty-five 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 pajama...

Their names were Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, and I am sorry to say that 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 referred 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 down and see for miles and miles across a marvelous landscape of woods and fields; and on a very clear day, if he looked in the right direction, he could see a tiny gray dot far away on the horizon, which was the house that he used to live in with his beloved mother and father. 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 nor 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...

THE TWO WOMEN and the small boy stood absolutely still on the grass underneath the tree, gazing up at this extraordinary fruit. James’s little face was glowing with excitement, his eyes were as big and bright as two stars. He could see the peach swelling larger and larger as clearly as if it were a balloon being blown up. In half a minute, it was the size of a melon! In another half-minute, it was twice as big again!

“The slightest shake and I’m sure it’ll fall off! It must weigh twenty or thirty pounds at least!”

The branch that the peach was growing upon was beginning to bend over further and further because of the weight.

Both aunts were now hopping around and around the tree, clapping their hands and shouting all sorts of silly things in their excitement. “Hallelujah!” Aunt Spiker shouted. “What a peach! What a peach!” “Terrifico!” Aunt Sponge cried out, “Magnifico! Splendifico! And what a meal!” “It’s still growing!” “I know! I know!”

As for James, he was so spellbound by the whole thing that he could only stand and stare and murmur quietly to himself, “Oh, isn’t it beautiful. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Look!” Aunt Spiker shouted. “It’s growing faster than ever now! It’s speeding up!” “I see it, Spiker! I do! I do!” Bigger and bigger grew the peach, bigger and bigger and bigger. Then at last, when it had become nearly as tall as the tree that it was growing on, as tall and wide, in fact, as a small house, the bottom part of it gently touched the ground—and there it rested.

Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker began walking slowly around the peach, inspecting it very cautiously from all sides. They were like a couple of hunters who had just shot an elephant and were not quite sure whether it was dead or alive. And the massive round fruit towered over them so high that they looked like midgets from another world beside it.

The skin of the peach was very beautiful—a rich buttery yellow with patches of brilliant pink and red. Aunt Sponge advanced cautiously and touched it with the tip of one finger. “It’s ripe!” she cried. “It’s just perfect! Now, see here, Spiker. Why don’t we go and get us a shovel right away and dig out a great big hunk of it for you and me to eat?”

“My dear Sponge,” Aunt Spiker said slowly, winking at her sister and smiling a sly, thin-lipped smile. “There’s a pile of money to be made out of this if only we can handle it right. You wait and see.”

THE NEWS THAT A PEACH almost as big as a house had suddenly appeared in someone’s garden spread like wildfire across the countryside, and the next day a stream of people came scrambling up the steep hill to gaze upon this marvel.

Quickly, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker called in carpenters and had them build a strong fence around the peach to save it from

the crowd; and at the same time, these two crafty women stationed themselves at the front gate with a large bunch of tickets and sta...

“All right! All right!” they answered. “We don’t care!” And the money came rolling into the pockets of the two greedy aunts.

But while all this excitement was going on outside, poor James was forced to stay locked in his bedroom, peeping through the bars of his window at the crowds below.

“The disgusting little brute will only get in everyone’s way if we let him wander about,” Aunt Spiker had said early that morning. “Oh, please!” he had begged. “I haven’t met any other children for years and years and there are going to be lots of them down there for me to play with. And perhaps I could help you with the tickets.” “Cut it out!” Aunt Sponge had snapped. “Your Aunt Spiker and I are about to bec...

Later, when the evening of the first day came and the people had all gone home, the aunts unlocked James’s door and ordered him to go outside and pick up all the banana skins and orange pee...

HUNGRY AND TREMBLING, James stood alone out in the open, wondering what to do. The night was all around him now, and high overhead a wild white moon was riding in the sky. There was not a sound, not a movement anywhere.

James felt exactly like that now. He stared straight ahead with large frightened eyes, hardly daring to breathe. Not far away, in the middle of the garden, he could see the giant peach towering over everything else. Surely it was even bigger tonight than ever before? And what a dazzling sight it was! The moonlight was shining and glinting on its great

curving sides, turning them to crystal and silver. It looked like a tremendous silver ball lying there in the grass, silent, mysterious, and wonderful.

The tunnel was damp and murky, and all around him there was the curious bittersweet smell of fresh peach. The floor was soggy under his knees, the walls were wet and sticky, and peach juice was dripping from the ceiling. James opened his mouth and caught some of it on his tongue. It tasted delicious.

He was crawling uphill now, as though the tunnel were leading straight toward the very center of the gigantic fruit. Every few seconds he paused and took a bite out of the

wall. The peach flesh was sweet and juicy, and marvel...

There was a roar of laughter from all sides. “Oh dear, oh dear!” they said. “What an awful thought!” “You mustn’t be frightened,” the Ladybug said kindly. “We wouldn’t dream of hurting you. You are one of us now, didn’t you know that? You are one of the crew. We’re all in the same boat.” “We’ve been waiting for you all day long,” the Old-Green-Grasshopper said. “We thought you were never going to turn up. I’m glad you made it.” “So cheer up, my boy, cheer up!” the Centipede said. “And meanwhile I wish you’d come over here and give me a hand with these boots. It takes me hours to get them all off by myself.”

And suddenly—everyone who had come over on the peach was a hero! They were all escorted to the steps of City Hall, where the Mayor of New York made a speech of welcome. And while he was doing this, one hundred steeplejacks, armed with ropes and ladders and pulleys, swarmed up to the top of the Empire State Building and lifted the giant peach off the spike and lowered it to the ground.

Then the Mayor shouted, “We must now have a ticker-tape parade for our wonderful visitors!” And so a procession

was formed, and in the leading car (which was an enormous open limousine) sat James and all his friends. Ne...

Behind the peach, skidding about all over the place in the peach juice, came the Mayor’s limousine, and behind the Mayor’s limousine came about twenty other limousines carrying all the important people of the City.

“Everyone can have some!”

The children jumped up onto the truck and swarmed like ants all over the giant peach, eating and eating to their hearts’ content. And as the news of what was happening spread quickly from street to street, more and more boys and girls came running from all directions to join the feast. Soon, there was a trail of children a mile long chasing after the peach as it proceeded slowly up Fifth Avenue. Really, it was a fantastic sight. To some people it looked as though the Pied Piper of Hamelin had suddenly descended upon New York. And to James, who had never dreamed that there could be so many children as this in the world, it was the most marvelous thing that had ever happened.

By the time the procession was over, the whole gigantic fruit had been completely eaten up, and only the big brown stone in the middle, licked clean and shiny by ten thousand eager little tongues, was left standing on the truck.

AND THUS THE JOURNEY ENDED. But the travelers lived on. Every one of them became rich and successful in the new country. The Centipede was made Vice-President-in-Charge-of-Sales of a high-class firm of boot and shoe manufacturers. The Earthworm, with his lovely pink skin, was employed by a company that made women’s face creams to speak commercials on television. The Silkworm and Miss Spider, after they had both been taught to make nylon thread instead of silk, set up a factory together and made ropes for tightrope walkers. The Glow-worm became the light inside the torch on the Statue of Liberty, and thus saved a grateful City from having to pay a huge electricity bill every year. The Old-Green-Grasshopper became a member of the New York Symphony Orchestra, where his playing was greatly admired.

The Ladybug, 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 Fire Department and lived happily ever after. And as for the enormous peach stone—it was set up permanently in a place of honor in Central Park and became a famous monument. But it was not only a famous monument. It was also a famous house. And inside the famous house there lived a famous person— JAMES HENRY TROTTER himself. And all you had to do any day of the week was to go and knock upon the door, and the door would always be opened to you, and you would always be asked to come inside and see the famous room where James had first met his friends. And sometimes, if you were very lucky, you would find the Old-Green-Grasshopper in there as well, resting peacefully in a chair before the fire, or perhaps it would be the Ladybug who had dropped in for a cup of tea and a gossip, or the Centipede

to show off a new batch of particularly elegant boots that he had just acquired.

Every day of the week, hundreds and hundreds of children from far and near came pouring into the City to see the marvelous peach stone in the Park. And James Henry Trotter, who once, if you remember, had been the saddest and loneliest little boy that you could find, now had all the friends and playmates in the world. And because so many of them were always begging him to tell and tell again the st...

So he did. And that is what you have just finished reading.