James and the Giant Peach

Author: Roald Dahl
Lexile measure:  870
Language:  No swear words, no potty language, but a lot of rude language (including "stupid", "fat", "lazy", and "ass" (as in, "don't be an a--").
Violence: James is beaten and treated abusively (physically and verbally) by his two aunts.  My daughter, at age 4, found this very scary and told me she didn't want me to read it to her.    The aunts are crushed by the rolling giant peach--no gory descriptions.
Big Kid Mature Topics:  As with Dahl's other books, the villains are so thoroughly mean that they seem almost inhuman.
Illustrations:   depends on the edition.  Mine (published in the 1970's) had beautiful color lithos in orange and black, but the one we have now is black and white line drawings every several pages--see below.
Plot: moderately complex.

I loved this book in the second grade, and above.  However I was very surprised by the amount of rude language and violence when I revisited this book as an adult with a small child.  DD and I have had many discussions and I think the book will go into hiding for a while after we finish reading it together.   DD probably won't miss it as she told me she wanted me to skip the first 8 or so chapters when I picked it up and suggested we read it together.  On the positive side, the story is incredibly original and the poetry makes it fun.  I think definitely it would be worth revisiting later.