James and the Giant Peach
James and the Giant Peach
Written by Roald Dahl
Illustrated by Nancy Ekholm Burkert
New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1961
6" x 9.35"
Kerlan Collection, Children's Literature Research Collections
University of Minnesota Libraries
In this fable by the author of Matilda, first published in 1961, a monster peach with a lonely boy riding inside rolls out of an English garden and into the world. Borne aloft by seagulls, the peach makes it all the way across the Atlantic. After first being mistaken for an incoming enemy bomb—in 1961, the Cold War was, after all, at its peak—the peach finally comes to rest atop the Empire State Building's television needle, and the boy inside emerges to a hero's welcome.
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