Best-selling Roald Dahl has delighted children for half a century and this 50th anniversary edition celebrates that amazing feat. His titles show no sign of ageing and thankfully they never will as all of them are timeless classics.
From the moment the magical Giant Peach appears in James’s unhappy life, sweeps away his deadly Aunts Spiker and Sponge and lifts him off on the adventure of a life time all readers know they are in for a treat. Up and up the Giant Peach flies allowing James to have a host of magical adventures including an encounter with the deadly Cloud Men before the final touch down. A classic story that can be read again and again.
For added fun: Roald Dahl Day is on 13th September every year. This year's celebrations focus lots of attention on the 50th anniversary of James and the Giant Peach but that's not everything. Why not get the kids to click on some of the links below to see what a huge amount of fun they can have, from joining the mission to push peaches around the world or organising a reading relay.
An enormous escaped rhinoceros from London Zoo has eaten James's parents. And it gets worse! James is packed off to live with his two really horrible aunts, Sponge and Spiker. Poor James is miserable, until something peculiar happens and James finds himself on the most wonderful and extraordinary journey he could ever imagine ...
Roald Dahl was born in Wales of Norwegian parents – the child of a second marriage. His father and elder sister died when Roald was just three. His mother was left to raise two stepchildren and her own four children. Roald was her only son.
He had an unhappy time at school - at Llandaff Cathedral School, at St Peter’s prep school in Weston-super-Mare and then at Repton in Derbyshire.
Dahl’s unhappy time at school was to influence his writing greatly. He once said that what distinguished him from most other children’s writers was “this business of remembering what it was like to be young”. Roald’s childhood and schooldays are the subject of his autobiography Boy.
Since Roald Dahl’s death, his books have more than maintained their popularity. Total sales of the UK editions are around 37 million, with more than 1 million copies sold every year! Sales have grown particularly strongly in America where Dahl books are now achieving the bestselling status that curiously proved elusive during the author’s lifetime.
