<Tr> <Th> Dewey Decimal </Th> <Td> (Fic) 21 </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> LC Class </Th> <Td> PZ8. D137 Jam 2002 </Td> </Tr> <P> James and the Giant Peach is a popular children's novel written in 1961 by British author Roald Dahl . The original first edition published by Alfred Knopf featured illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert . There have been reillustrated versions of it over the years, done by Michael Simeon for the first British edition, Emma Chichester Clark, Lane Smith and Quentin Blake . It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1996 . </P> <P> The plot centres on a young English orphan boy who enters a gigantic, magical peach, and has a wild and surreal cross-world adventure with seven magically - altered garden bugs he meets . They set off on a journey to escape from James' two mean and cruel aunts . Roald Dahl was originally going to write about a giant cherry, but changed it to James and the Giant Peach because a peach is "prettier, bigger and squishier than a cherry ." </P>

When was james and the giant peach written