James and the Giant Peach was published in 1961, one of Dahl’s earliest children’s novels. It combines fantasy adventure, dark comedy and a heartfelt story about finding your true family.
James Henry Trotter is a kind, sensitive boy whose parents are eaten by a rhinoceros when he is four years old. He goes to live with his two aunts — the fat, lazy Aunt Sponge and the short, mean Aunt Spiker — who treat him cruelly and make him do all the housework.
A mysterious old man gives James a bag of magic green things with instructions not to drop them. James trips and they sink into the ground near the garden’s old peach tree. A single peach begins to grow on the tree — and keeps growing until it is the size of a house. Inside the peach, James finds extraordinary insect companions: a Centipede (boastful but brave), a Grasshopper (dignified), a Ladybird (kind), a Glowworm (shy), an Earthworm (gloomy but useful), a Silkworm and a Spider (Miss Spider, who weaves and spins). Together they roll the peach away and journey across the ocean.
They cross the Atlantic, defeat a squadron of Cloud-Men (who control the weather), and eventually land on the spike of the Empire State Building in New York City. James’s aunts, who followed the peach in a plane, are killed when the peach lands on them. James and his insect friends become celebrities in New York. James lives in the peach stone (now in Central Park) and the insects find happy lives across the city. He has found, at last, a real family.