James and the Giant Peach

We recently finished reading James and the Giant Peach.  This is a great book and the kids LOVED it.  Reading another book by Roald Dahl allows us to dig a little deeper into how Mr. Dahl tells a story and we are able to notice things that he does in his writing (adults are often not nice to kids, the main character has an issue/hardship they need to overcome (James is being raised by his horrible aunts), and in the end, everyone does end up happily ever after (James and his new friends end up in New York City where they live happily ever after). We compare characters (from all of the books we’ve read out loud), character traits, and how the characters change during the book. 

Vocabulary words:  nuisance, miserable, ramshackle, desolate, ancient, peculiar, ghastly, laurel, luminous, chaos, disentangle, trifle, giddy, amidst, primly, and froth