James and the Giant Peach Trivia
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90 free James and the Giant Peach trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 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 90 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 02In the 1996 Giant Peach film, what magic does the mysterious old man hand James in a bag?
Crocodile tongues
Crocodile tongues were meant to work their magic on James, but he trips and spills the bag, and the wriggling green things escape into the soil beneath a withered peach tree.
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 of panicking New Yorkers, and once the peach has landed the police take its giant bugs for visitors from Mars.
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 to New York, where they come at him with fire axes until Miss Spider wraps them in silk and the police arrest them; the book simply flattens them under the fruit.
Q 06Which composer wrote the songs and score of the 1996 James and the Giant Peach film, earning its only Oscar nomination?
Randy Newman
Randy Newman was Disney's suggestion after its music division turned down the director's first choice as 'too weird', and his songs include 'My Name Is James' and 'Eating the Peach'.
Q 07Once James enters the fruit, the 1996 Giant Peach film shifts into a brighter dream world its director compared to which classic?
The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz was the model: the live-action opening is kept to muted greys and greens, and the director saved the animation and saturated colour for the world inside the peach.
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 the limit Dahl set in a recorded chat with the painter Francis Bacon, yet the 2023 Giant Peach rewrote whole verses of the Centipede's song about the two aunts.
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 on screen and voiced his animated double in the 1996 Giant Peach film?
Paul Terry
Paul Terry was picked from hundreds of candidates after a casting search in England, his director recalling that when the boy read, it 'just knocked me over'.
Q 11Once the peach is as big as 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, in a garden James is never allowed to leave, so for three years he sees no other children 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's character hands James a bag and promises that marvellous things will happen, and the boy promptly trips and spills it on his way home.
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 lies in the peach's path, three years before Charlie and the Chocolate Factory appeared, and one illustrated edition even paints the name WONKA on its wall.
Q 15At the end of Dahl's novel, what does James do because so many children want his story?
Writes it down as a book
Writes it down as a book, and Dahl's last line reveals that the book James wrote is the very one the reader has just finished.
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 18In Dahl's novel, which animal escapes from London Zoo and eats James's parents on a shopping trip?
A rhinoceros
A rhinoceros eats them when James is four, and the orphan is packed off to two aunts who work him hard and never let him play with another child.
Q 19After New York's children eat the giant peach, where is its stone set up as James's new home?
Central Park
Central Park is where the peach stone becomes a house, and James, who once had no one to play with, now has children calling every day to hear his story.
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 flesh in the film's live-action opening, before James crawls into the peach and the story turns to animation.
Richard Dreyfuss, Hooper in Jaws, speaks the Centipede's lines, but a second actor takes over whenever the character sings.
Q 24Which Thelma & Louise star voices Miss Spider in the 1996 Giant Peach film?
Susan Sarandon
Susan Sarandon won her Dead Man Walking Oscar less than three weeks before the film opened, and her Miss Spider, the bug James saves from his aunts, ends up running a 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 Frasier star voices the motherly Mrs Ladybug in the 1996 Giant Peach film?
Jane Leeves
Jane Leeves, Frasier's Daphne Moon, gives the Ladybug her voice, and the film's epilogue has the kindly bug set up in New York as an obstetrician.
Q 27Tim Burton produced the 1996 James and the Giant Peach film, but who directed it?
Henry Selick
Henry Selick had also directed The Nightmare Before Christmas for Burton, and he first met Dahl's book through a Disney storyboard artist who had loved it since third grade.
Q 28In Dahl's novel, how does New York honour James and the bugs once officials hear his tale?
Ticker-tape parade
Ticker-tape parade is the welcome: James and his friends ride in an open limousine with the peach on a truck behind, and by the end the city's children have eaten the fruit down to the stone.
Q 29Besides a mechanical shark, which undead foes does the 1996 Giant Peach film add that Dahl's book lacks?
Skeletal pirates
Skeletal pirates guard a sunken ship in icy northern waters, where the Centipede dives for a compass after letting the peach drift off course and has to be rescued.
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.