Yes, James and the Giant Peach Is Banned!

James and the Giant Peach tells the story of James Henry Trotter, an orphan trapped with his monstrous aunts, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker. After a mysterious old man gives him a bag of magic crocodile tongues, a peach in the garden grows to the size of a house. James crawls inside and finds a crew of giant, talking insects. Together, they sail the peach across the Atlantic Ocean to New York City. Published in 1961 by Alfred A. Knopf with illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert, it was Roald Dahl’s first children’s novel and remains one of his most beloved.

The book has been challenged repeatedly in Florida, Wisconsin, and Texas. In Charlotte Harbor, Florida, parents said it was “not appropriate reading material for young children” in 1991. In Altoona, Wisconsin, parents objected to the word “ass” and references to wine, tobacco, and snuff. In Hernando County, Florida, a parent objected to Grasshopper’s line, “I’d rather be fried alive and eaten by a Mexican!” as well as the substance references. In Indian River County, Florida, the challenge targeted the book’s “mystical elements” involving magic crocodile tongues.

Why You Should Read This

Dahl understood something about children that most adults have forgotten: kids love stories where the world is unfair and then gets upended. James’s aunts are cartoonishly evil. They’re squashed flat by the giant peach. No one mourns them. That gleeful, subversive justice is exactly why kids have adored this book for sixty years.

The complaints against it read like a parody. “Contains the word ‘ass’” (it’s a donkey reference). “References to tobacco” (a caterpillar smokes, as caterpillars in books often do). “Promotes mysticism” (magic tongues make a peach grow). Dahl wrote for children by refusing to talk down to them. He gave them villains who were truly terrible, heroes who were truly brave, and a world where the impossible happened on every page. Banning his books is like banning recess: you can do it, but you’re only punishing the kids.