James and the Giant Peach
Written by Roald Dahl
Illustrated by Quinton Blake
Reviewed by Taryn P. (age 11)
This book was about a little boy whose parents got killed by a rhino. His name is James Henry Trottier. He was sent to go live with his two greedy aunts. They were very mean to him and tortured him like crazy! They would also work him to death, morning to night, every day until one day he was working outside and a creepy old man came by and gave James some green ugly things that were magic and were lucky. James started running home because he was so excited and he dropped them! The magical green things were spreading and went to the tree, and the peach popped up and started getting bigger and bigger. Then suddenly, it was bigger than the tree itself. The next day the aunts started charging for people to enter the gate to take picures and look at it but they couldn't touch it. While James was locked up in his room upstairs he even asked if could come out side to play and he would help sell tickets but they said no!!!!!!! Then it was finally all over and he got to go outside to pick up the mess everyone made. He saw a hole in the peach so he crawled through it until he hit a giant core. James fainted when he saw all those huge creatures inside the peach core. Then he woke up and all the creatures eyes were glued to him. But then finally they started talking and asking lots of questions and he tried to answer all them. They were all talking about how mean and greedy Spiker and Sponge were then the centipede cut the string and the peach started rolling. Everyone became happy because they were away from Spiker and Sponge and they were dead because the peach squished them. The creatures and James went floating all the way to New York City. All the creatures became famous and each had an important job.
I liked this book a lot because all the creatures were a good team with James. My favorite part was when the peach killed Aunt Spiker and Aunt Sponge. I liked the centipede and earthworm the best because they liked to argue with each other a lot, and call each other bad names. That was funny. I liked when centipede would tell someone like James not to be a "butthead" (but the other word.) I read another book by Roald Dahl, Matilda. James and Matilda both had bad lives at the beginning, but they both became happy at the end.
I recommend this book because some people's lives are sad like James' life. I think anyone who has a bad life like James that is older than seven years old could read this book and they'll enjoy it.