Does It Come With Gravy?

One of my favorite children’s books is James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. This is the same genius that brought us Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. If my memory serves, my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Euler, read this book aloud to the class. I have read it several times since and enjoy the movie that was put out several years ago.

The book is about an orphan, James, who is forced to live with his two selfish spinster aunts. They are very cruel to him. He does all of the chores, gets very little to eat, sleeps in a hole of a room, and is forced to live on the memories of his parents for any kind of warmth. His aunts have a stunted peach tree in their yard and kind hearted James is given some magic by a passer by. He accidentally trips and spills the magic at the base of the peach tree. Miraculously, the peach tree grows this enormous peach. His aunts make a spectacle of the large fruit and James is assigned to clean up the mess. While cleaning up around the fruit, he ends up finding an entrance into the heart of the peach and crawls inside. In the pit, he finds a spider, a worm, a grasshopper, centipede, a ladybug and a glow worm. The peach breaks free of the tree and rolls across country into the ocean. After sharks try to eat them, they use the spiders silk to capture seagulls and they lift the peach on a trans-Atlantic flight. The journey and ending are a delight to both read and watch.

In one of my favorite scenes from the movie, they are worried about starving to death when they come to the realization that they are inside of a giant fruit. Well that solved the problem and they break into song. The glow worm, who is blind and slightly hard of hearing asks, “Does it come with gravy?” Yuk. Peach and gravy are not a combination that sounds remotely appealing. In the end, James reaches the America and has the love and adoration of his insect friends. What more could a little boy want.

Icool

Cobb