James And The Giant Peach Analysis

Remember Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are and Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach? Or the Japanese folktale about Momotaro, the Peach Boy who battles monstrous creatures on a distant island? Who knew that Sendak and Dahl may have plundered Japanese folklore to construct their stories about boys who set sail in search of adventure? We will never know why Dahl changed his title from James and the Giant Cherry and gave James Trotter a "great big beautiful peach" to navigate the waters, and there are no doubt multiple sources for Sendak's Wild Things (the "Jewish relatives" disguised as horses until an editor pointed out that the artist was not very good at drawing them). Both authors might have fallen under the spell of the celebrated