by Roald Dahl
Libby audiobook 3 hours
Read by Jeremy Irons
Published: 1961 (this version, 2004)
Genre: children's fantasy
When I was a kid, I loved this book. I think it was the idea of a giant peach with tunnels and hidey holes running through it . . . I liked the idea of attics, forts, and other hideouts.
When I was a mom with young kids and I read it to them, I was horrified! The two aunts were absolutely wicked in how they treated young James. I don't know if I even finished reading the book to my children. And the aunts get smashed to death by the peach! What kind of children's book . . .
I got this audiobook because I spend a lot of time in my car. It's nice to have stories to listen to. Jeremy Irons has an amazing voice.
This story is too ridiculous for me, though. James' mom and dad are eaten by a charging rhino in "35 seconds flat" . . . ? Um. Don't think that is a thing that a rhino escaping from the London Zoo could or would do.
Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker were as horrible as I remembered. Poor James! To become an orphan and then to be treated so abusively by his guardians . . . sad.
The seagulls (500 tethered to the peach - logistics?), crossing the Atlantic in one night, living in Central Park in the peach pit, . . . this story is just too bizarre. And the centipede is an obnoxious jerk.
Anthropomorphic stuff . . . poems and songs / limericks . . . the Cloudmen (I don't remember this from earlier reading.) Interesting. Weird.
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