Which 1961 children's novel by Roald Dahl was banned in some schools for its violent content?

The 1961 children’s novel by Roald Dahl challenged in schools for violent and frightening content is James and the Giant Peach.

The story follows James Henry Trotter, an orphan mistreated by his cruel aunts, Spiker and Sponge. After magical crocodile-lizard tongues are introduced into an ordinary peach, the fruit grows to enormous size. James climbs inside and travels across the landscape and Atlantic Ocean with a group of giant talking insects.

Dahl’s mixture of grotesque humor, danger, and macabre imagery has made the book a recurring target of censorship. Challenges have cited frightening scenes, supernatural elements, violence, references to drugs, and language or descriptions considered unsuitable for children. The book’s tone is deliberately unsettling as well as playful, especially in its treatment of James’s abusive home life and the deaths of his parents.

Readers sometimes confuse its censorship history with that of Matilda or The Witches, which have also been challenged. James and the Giant Peach was adapted into a stop-motion/live-action film released in 1996.