Rating: 5/5
When his parents were eaten by an escaping rhinosaurus, James was sent to live with his incredibly evil aunts, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker. Their house (which was more like a castle) was on top of a large, bleak hill, where nobody dared to trespass – even the people delivering post left it impaled on the big black fence. The only thing to accompany scared and upset James on the hill was a dead peach tree which supplied no leaves, blossom, and of course no peaches. But one day something extraordinarily peculiar happened.
A peach started to grow on the tree. But indeed that was just slightly peculiar. The almost very peculiar thing was that the peach grew and grew. Sooner or later it was the size of a large armchair. And now the very peculiar thing happened. The peach grew such a lot that now, whilst it was about the size of a house, the bottom of its ripe, juicy, orange and red flesh was scraping lightly on the mud below. (Sponge and Spiker always mowed away their grass, because it looked too merry). But now came the extraordinarily peculiar happening. It came when the two quarreling aunts made their way back to the house late that night, and they were quarreling because Sponge wanted to eat it and Spiker wanted to save it and bring a fortune out of it the next day. It was settled that the latter was right.
James found a large hole at the bottom of the peach. When he took a few delicious bites around the edge, it became just big enough for him to crawl into. The tunnel was so juicy that the peach juice dripped onto his back and his head as he slithered through. The ground was so soft that James’ knees sunk into it and it took quite a bit of effort to pull them out for each movement. But eventually he found something that was so peculiar that only Roald Dahl can describe it. It is, for me, almost undescribable.
Read it and have a brilliant time as James and his new friends go on the most great big adventure that Time has ever told!