James and the Giant Peach

by Roald Dahl

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.

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.

“Crocodile tongues!” he cried. “One thousand long slimy crocodile tongues boiled up in the skull of a dead witch for twenty days and nights with the eyeballs of a lizard! Add the fingers of a young monkey, the gizzard of a pig, the beak of a green parrot, the juice of a porcupine, and three spoonfuls of sugar. Stew for another week, and then let the moon do the rest!”

Whoever they meet first, be it bug, insect, animal, or tree, that will be the one who gets the full power of their magic!

“Roll up! Roll up!” Aunt Spiker yelled. “Only one shilling to see the giant peach!” “Half price for children under six weeks old!” Aunt Sponge shouted. “One at a time, please! Don’t push! Don’t push! You’re all going to get in!” “Hey, you! Come back, there! You haven’t paid!”

The peach rolled on. And behind it, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker lay ironed out upon the grass as flat and thin and lifeless as a couple of paper dolls cut out of a picture book.

“Next time you stand in a field or in a garden and look around you, then just remember this: that every grain of soil upon the surface of the land, every tiny little bit of soil that you can see, has actually passed through the body of an Earthworm during the last few years! Isn’t that wonderful?” “It’s not possible!” said James. “My dear boy, it’s a fact.” “You mean you actually swallow soil?” “Like mad,” the Earthworm said proudly. “In one end and out the other.” “But what’s the point?” “What do you mean, what’s the point?” “Why do you do it?” “We do it for the farmers. It makes the soil nice and light and crumbly so that things will grow well in it. If you really want to know, the farmers couldn’t do without us. We are essential. We are vital. So it is only natural that the farmer should love us.

They are very pleased when they have lots of Ladybugs in their fields.” “But why?” James asked. “Because we gobble up all the nasty little insects that are gobbling up all the farmer’s crops. It helps enormously, and we ourselves don’t charge a penny for our services.”

“But what about you, Miss Spider?” asked James. “Aren’t you also much loved in the world?” “Alas, no,” Miss Spider answered, sighing long and loud. “I am not loved at all. And yet I do nothing but good. All day long I catch flies and mosquitoes in my webs. I am a decent person.”