James and the Giant Peach 4/4

We made it! The end of another glorious book. Sometimes ending can seem so I don’t know…final! Having an opportunity to engage with what you were reading just a little bit more means that in someway we can postpone (delay) that ending. And parents, if you are reading this book aloud with your kids this is a great way to continue the conversation about this book or maybe even begin one.

I don’t know about you, but this book seemed to go by really fast. But that isn’t just how it felt, there are devices in use that helped the author write a story with a very quick pace. If you are thinking about PLOT, you have got your finger on the pulse of this post because that is a major part of what we’ll get into. But not just plot, but how it connects to ACTION, PACE, AND CAUSE AND EFFECT. It’s far more fun than it sounds, trust me!

A lot of the time plot gets confused with summary. So if someone were going to ask you what is the plot of James and the Giant Peach you’d probably describe what the book is about. A young boy gets orphaned and goes to live with his aunts, a man gives him a bag of magic that leads to the growth of a peach and a cross-Atlantic adventure. This by the way, it a perfectly fine answer to that question. But it isn’t the WHOLE answer.