<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> <P> Because of the story's occasional macabre and potentially frightening content, it has become a regular target of the censors . The actors Jeremy Irons, Andrew Sachs, and Julian Rhind - Tutt provide the English language audiobook recordings . </P> <P> Four - year - old James Henry Trotter lives with his loving parents in a beautiful cottage by the sea in the south of England, until his parents are killed by an escaped rhinoceros during a shopping trip in London . </P> <P> As a result, James is forced to live with his two cruel aunts, Spiker and Sponge, in a run - down house on a high, desolate hill near the White Cliffs of Dover . For four years, James is treated as a drudge, forced to do hard labor, beaten for hardly any reason, improperly fed, and forced to sleep on bare floorboards in the attic . One summer afternoon, after a particularly upsetting altercation with his aunts, James stumbles across a mysterious stranger, who gives him magic green "crocodile tongues" which, when drunk with water, will bring him happiness and great adventures . On the way to the house, James spills the crocodile tongues onto a barren peach tree, which then produces a single peach that quickly grows to nearly the size of a house . The next day, the aunts sell tickets to neighbors and tourists to see the giant peach while James watches from the window of his room in which he is locked up, to prevent him from getting in the way of his aunts' business . </P>

What killed james parents in james and the giant peach