As of last evening, at long last, a parenting moment that I have been much looking forward to has finally come about. The girl is allowing me to read James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl as our nightly read-aloud book. I love this book. So much. The copy that I have is one that I picked up in college (it has particularly great illustrations that look like they are done in muted colored pencil) and saved for the time when I would be someone's teacher or mother so that I could share it.
However, it has been a rare moment when I've had a student at school who would listen to me read for very long (a good ninety percent of the kids I'm working with have whopping auditory processing disorders) and Mariam has always been a bit too sensitive to brave the first few chapters. In fact, when I finally convinced her to give it a go last night, we had to read right through the first seven chapters in one sitting so that she could be assured that James would indeed escape his horrible, terrible life for something happier. Between parent-devouring rhinos and evil, nasty aunts, the beginning of this book can certainly be a bit much for kids who avoid the dark and dramatic. And, if we are being honest, the remainder of the book can still use a bit of on-the-fly editing, particularly in respect to a few choice words here and there.
This caveat aside, James and the Giant Peach is a truly fantastic tale. The descriptions of the characters are incredibly well done and the plot moves quickly and in the most unexpected ways. Small boy escapes his life of loneliness via a gigantic peach that flattens his horrible aunts and rolls across the countryside into the sea? An imaginative start to say the least and once James meets the bickering but endearing crowd of giant insects that are to be his traveling companions on the road to a better life, the story really gets moving.
Like in so many of Roald Dahl's stories, the villains in James and the Giant Peach are really and tremendously terrible and the good do suffer a bit at their hands. But, justice is served in a fantastical way, adventure arrives just on time and willingness to believe in the unbelievable ushers in the first days of a better life.
We don't do all that much in the way of movie watching around here, mostly due to that avoidance of the dramatic I previously mentioned. I would be a bit curious, however, to get a few opinions on the James and the Giant Peach movie that came out a few years back. Worth a rental?
