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50 free James and the Giant Peach trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
James and the Giant Peach is the book where Roald Dahl found his voice: an orphan, two monstrous aunts, a fruit the size of a house and a crew of oversized garden bugs who turn out to be the best family a boy could have. It was his first novel for children after the war, and it has never been out of print since. These fifty questions follow the story from the aunts' hilltop to the skies over the Atlantic, then move on to the 1996 Disney film that mixed live action with stop-motion puppetry, its British and American voice cast, the songs and the awards, and the stage musical that followed. A few questions cover the illustrators who have drawn the peach over the decades and the 2023 row over the rewritten text. The quiz suits anyone who read the book at school, parents who have watched the film a dozen times, and pub teams who want a Dahl round that is not about the chocolate factory. Ten questions per round, answers and explanations after every one.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01After a plane cuts its seagull strings, James's giant peach lands on which New York landmark?
Empire State Building
The Empire State Building's spire spears the peach, bringing out police and firemen before the city's children eat the fruit down to its stone.
Q 02What does the old man give James in the 1996 film, able to grow anything to colossal size?
Crocodile tongues
Crocodile tongues, glowing and wormlike, leap from James's spilled bag into the soil under a barren tree, and the giant peach swells out of it overnight.
Q 03When James's giant peach appears over New York in Dahl's novel, what do crowds first mistake it for?
A bomb
A bomb is the first guess and a spaceship the second, so police and firemen are already waiting when the peach comes down on the city.
Q 04Which sky-dwellers, makers of hail and rainbows, pelt James's peach after the Centipede mocks them?
The Cloud-Men
The Cloud-Men hurl cans of rainbow paint that set the Centipede solid as a statue, and only the rain from their faucets frees him.
Q 05Unlike in Dahl's novel, what becomes of Aunts Sponge and Spiker in the 1996 Giant Peach film?
They survive and follow James
They survive and follow James all the way to New York, arriving with fire axes at the landing until Miss Spider wraps them in silk; the book simply flattens them under the rolling fruit.
Q 06Which composer's five songs for the 1996 James and the Giant Peach film earned its only Oscar nomination?
Randy Newman
Randy Newman was Disney's suggestion after its music division vetoed the director's first choice as too weird, and his songs include 'My Name Is James' and 'Eating the Peach'.
Q 07As James enters the fruit, the 1996 Giant Peach film turns from grey to colour in a nod to which 1939 film?
The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz made the same switch when Dorothy reached Oz, and the Peach film's greys and greens give way to vivid colour once the stop-motion voyage begins.
Q 08Puffin's 2023 Giant Peach edits broke Dahl's order never to change so much as what in his books?
A single comma
A single comma was Dahl's stated limit, yet the revised James and the Giant Peach carried more than seventy changes, including a brand-new poem written for Aunt Sponge.
Q 09Which of the bugs in Dahl's novel was cut from the 1996 Giant Peach film to lighten the animation load?
The Silkworm
The Silkworm's one job in the book, spinning thread to harness the seagulls, was handed to Miss Spider on screen, so the character simply vanished.
Q 10Which child actor played James in the 1996 Giant Peach film, then quit acting and became a civil engineer?
Paul Terry
Paul Terry was picked from hundreds of children, went on to the sitcom Microsoap, and then left the business for an engineering career that included BAE Systems.
Q 11Once James's peach grows to the size of a house, what do Aunts Sponge and Spiker do with it?
Sell tickets to see it
Sell tickets to see it: the aunts fence off the peach and charge tourists, while James is locked indoors and watches the crowds through his bedroom bars.
Q 12In Dahl's novel, where does the 'queer ramshackle house' stand in which Aunts Sponge and Spiker keep James?
On top of a high hill
On top of a high hill, where James sleeps on bare floorboards, does all the aunts' chores and is called 'you disgusting little beast' instead of his name.
Q 13What does the Centipede do in Dahl's novel that sends James's giant peach rolling away from the aunts?
Q 21Which BAFTA winner for The Age of Innocence plays the fat Aunt Sponge in the 1996 Giant Peach film?
Miriam Margolyes
Miriam Margolyes plays Sponge in the flesh and then lends her voice to one of the bugs in the animated stretch, doing double duty in the film.
Q 22Which In the Name of the Father Oscar nominee plays the old man and narrates the 1996 Giant Peach film?
Pete Postlethwaite
Pete Postlethwaite appears as the Magic Man in the live-action opening, then his voice carries the whole story as narrator over the stop-motion voyage.
Q 23Which Jaws star voices the swaggering Centipede in the 1996 James and the Giant Peach film?
Richard Dreyfuss
Cuts through its stem
Cuts through its stem, and the freed peach crushes both aunts flat before leaving a trail of wreckage on its way down to the sea.
Q 14Rolling towards the sea in Dahl's novel, James's runaway peach smashes through which kind of building?
A chocolate factory
A chocolate factory is among the wreckage the peach leaves behind before it splashes into the sea and is ringed by ravenous sharks.
Q 15How many seagulls does James harness to lift the giant peach out of the shark-filled sea in Dahl's novel?
501
501 seagulls, each tied by a silk thread to the peach, haul the fruit clear of the sharks and carry it high over the Atlantic.
Q 16Which of the peach's bugs does James dangle as bait to lure a flock of seagulls down to the fruit?
The Earthworm
The Earthworm, pink and legless, is the bait the gulls dive for, and in the film he is later rewarded with a job as a skin-care company's mascot.
Q 17The Centipede in James and the Giant Peach boasts of a hundred legs, but Dahl gives him how many?
42
42 legs is the real tally for the crew's boisterous rascal, who later tumbles overboard mid-flight and has to be fished back by James.
Q 18After three years of misery with his aunts, how old is James when the old man hands him the magic?
Seven
Seven is the age Dahl gives his hero; James was four when an escaped zoo animal ate his parents on a London shopping trip.
Q 19After New York's children eat the giant peach, where do James and the bugs make a home inside its stone?
Central Park
Central Park is where the peach stone ends up as a house, with James and the bugs each taking a New York job and the city's children as their new friends.
Q 20Which Absolutely Fabulous star plays the bony Aunt Spiker in the 1996 James and the Giant Peach film?
Joanna Lumley
Joanna Lumley, Patsy Stone of Absolutely Fabulous, plays Spiker in the opening live-action stretch; the film switches to stop-motion once James crawls inside the peach.
Richard Dreyfuss, Hooper in Jaws, speaks the Centipede's lines, but a second actor takes over whenever the character sings.
Q 24Which actress, fresh from her Dead Man Walking Oscar, voices Miss Spider in the 1996 Giant Peach film?
Susan Sarandon
Susan Sarandon voices the spider James had rescued from his aunts, and at the film's end Miss Spider opens a New York nightclub.
Q 25Which actor, Mozart in the original stage Amadeus, voices the Grasshopper in the 1996 Giant Peach film?
Simon Callow
Simon Callow created Mozart in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus at the National Theatre in 1979, and his Grasshopper ends the film as a concert musician in New York.
Q 26Which actress, Daphne Moon in Frasier, voices the motherly Mrs Ladybug in the 1996 Giant Peach film?
Jane Leeves
Jane Leeves gives the Ladybug her voice, and the film's epilogue has the kindly bug set up in New York as an obstetrician.
Q 27Which Johnny Bravo voice actor sings the Centipede's songs in the 1996 Giant Peach film?
Jeff Bennett
Jeff Bennett takes over from the speaking actor whenever the Centipede sings, fronting 'That's the Life' and 'Eating the Peach' on the soundtrack.
Q 28The 1996 Giant Peach film is set in the summer of which year, with James already in his aunts' care?
1948
1948 is the film's setting, placing James's postwar English childhood thirteen years before Dahl's novel appeared.
Q 29Besides a mechanical shark, which undead foes does the 1996 Giant Peach film add that Dahl's book lacks?
Skeletal pirates
Skeletal pirates lurk in the Arctic Ocean, one of the film's invented detours, alongside the giant mechanical shark that hunts the peach at sea.
Q 30In the 1996 Giant Peach film, the beast that ate James's parents returns over New York in what form?
A thunderstorm
A thunderstorm in the shape of the beast bears down on the peach and strikes it with lightning, and James's stand against it is the film's climax before the fall onto the city.