Roald Dahl: James and The Giant Peach (1961, Alfred A. Knopf)
English language
Published July 18, 1961 by Alfred A. Knopf.
James and the Giant Peach is a popular children's novel written in 1961 by British author Roald Dahl. The first edition, published by Alfred Knopf, featured illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert. There have been re-illustrated versions of it over the years, done by Michael Simeon (for the first British edition), Emma Chichester Clark, Lane Smith and Quentin Blake. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1996 (with Smith being a conceptual designer) which was directed by Henry Selick, and a musical in 2010. The plot centres on a young English orphan boy who enters a gigantic, magical peach, and has a wild and surreal cross-world adventure with seven magically altered garden bugs he meets. Dahl was originally going to write about a giant cherry, but changed it to James and the Giant Peach because a peach is "prettier, bigger and squishier than a cherry." Because of …
James and the Giant Peach is a popular children's novel written in 1961 by British author Roald Dahl. The first edition, published by Alfred Knopf, featured illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert. There have been re-illustrated versions of it over the years, done by Michael Simeon (for the first British edition), Emma Chichester Clark, Lane Smith and Quentin Blake. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1996 (with Smith being a conceptual designer) which was directed by Henry Selick, and a musical in 2010. The plot centres on a young English orphan boy who enters a gigantic, magical peach, and has a wild and surreal cross-world adventure with seven magically altered garden bugs he meets. Dahl was originally going to write about a giant cherry, but changed it to James and the Giant Peach because a peach is "prettier, bigger and squishier than a cherry." Because of the story's occasional macabre and potentially frightening content, it has become a regular target of censors.Dahl dedicated the book to his six-year-old daughter Olivia, who died from complications of measles only a year after the book was published.American novelist Bret Easton Ellis has cited James the Giant Peach as his favourite children's book:
It changed my life. My aunt read it to me, my sisters and my three cousins in two sittings over vacation at a beach house when I was about six. The idea that the world was meaner, crueller, more absurd and fantastical than anything that picture books had previously showed me made a real impact. That was the moment I couldn’t go back [as a reader].
Tämä oli jotenkin väsyttävä tarina. Siis sillä tavalla, että jouduin koko ajan pitämään taukoja, kun en vain jaksanut lukea. Myös Dahlin lastenkirjoille ominaiset jäyhät sukupuoliroolit korostuivat tässä jotenkin silmiinpistävän kovasti. En myöskään hirveästi innostunut loppuratkaisusta, jossa raha ja kuuluisuus hyvittivät kaikki aiemmat kärsimykset.
