I know, I'm probably the only person who didn't read James and the Giant Peach as a kid, but I picked up this used copy a while back with the intention of giving it to my younger cousin Hannah. Little did I know it would be so good and that I would want to get her a brand new version for her book collection so that I could share this one with an unsuspecting reader.

Released on Wednesday, July 09, 2003 at 5801 S. Ellis Avenue in Chicago, Illinois USA.

At the campus bookstore across the street (in the free newspapers area)

I was in Chicago for about forty hours. I'd come to find an apartment for the next year while I was a grad student at the University of Chicago. My future roommate and I met where we had last met, at the campus bookstore, which was also our first meeting. We went and looked at a few places, decided on one to rent, and then went to kick around campus a little. We had some coffee, again at the bookstore, and as we were leaving, knowing the value of a few good free newspapers, I stopped to look at the stacks, and I found a book face down on one of the middle piles. When I turned it over, I found a note about how this book wasn't lost, but released, and that it should be passed on after being enjoyed. When I peeled the note off, I found "James and the Giant Peach" underneath. I was about 4 hours from a flight back home, to Maryland via Midway Airport and Regan National Airport in DC, and I figured there could hardly be a better place to let loose a book like this, about a journey of fantastic proportions, than a vast and bustling international airport in one of the world's great metropolitan centers. So, I said goodbye again to my future roommate, caught a bus to Midway, and started reading again one of my favorite books. I finished it before my flight even left, because the pilots were held up in St. Louis by some bad weather, so while I waited I tired to pen a note equal in scope and hope to the one I found with the book. I mentioned where I'd found it, what the first note said, and my plans for the release of the book and their reasoning. Last, I concluded with a wish for peace and love and hope. I got on my flight, flew to Washington, D.C., arriving well after the airport had closed for usual business. News stands were closed, coffee shops gated, souvenirs dark behind horizontal bars. I walked with the rest of the flight to the baggage claim, even though I had only my carry-on, and I stood, like everyone else, waiting for the siren to sound and the red light to blink. When it did, I backed up slowly, away from the crowd, and bent at the knee to put "James and the Giant Peach" face down, again, on a bench. I was a little worried about leaving something so surreptitiously in an airport in these times, but I smiled at the thought of myself thrown to the floor with a boot on my throat and a rifle pointed at my face, laughing and crying "It's just a book, it's just a book," until some MP picked it up and found that, indeed, it was just a book. That was almost three weeks ago. I'm sure someone has it by now, whether a weary senator, a lobbyist, a bussinessman, a diplomat, some resident of the District, or even that MP, but sans the impetus of wild-haired bearded man looking around and dropping it, and leaving without looking back at 1 AM. Regardless, I hope you that found it enjoy it, and I thank you that left it for doing so. It had the power for me, when I took myself most seriously (future grad student at the University of Chicago, looking for lodging, weary with my bag and my ticket), to uncover in me that child-like state, to show me myself without a world's worth of accretion, to give me the simple job of reading with the simple end of leaving this marvelous book, and wonderfully to give me a smile and the hope of giving a stranger the same. Thank you.