 | By: Terry Pratchett Binding: Library Binding Publisher: HarperCollins Academic ISBN: 006054192X ISBN-13: 9780060541927 Released: 02 Apr 2007 RRP: Average Rating:  |
My favourite character is Kirsty,because she is so good at judo & confident in herself!!!I think this book is reallly funny,but sad in parts too.
Johnny & the Bomb has recently been made into a three-part t.v series & it is just how i imagined the book to be,on a recent interview Terry Pratchett (the author) said it was just like walking into his head when he was writing the book!
I reallly reccomend this book to children (and adults as well!) adged 7 to whatever age!!!I thouroughly enjoyed it & if you like stories about the past with a twist the this is the book for you!!!
This is the first thing of Pratchett's that I have ever read, & I learn from the dust-jacket that it is one of a series of children's books. My own childhood is a long way behind me, but on the other hand I can remember - or I think I can - quite a lot about it, & I have some idea how this book might have seemed to me at the age of, say, 12. At that age I was devouring science fiction - where, I wonder, is Vargo Statten these days, & what has become of the works of Jon J Deegan? I had probably read alll the Just William books by Richmal Crompton by then, & I would certainly have noticed just how strongly Pratchett's formula derives from them, although whether I would have been bothered by that I don't know. The derivative feel of this book certainly bothers me now. Johnny Maxwell's little gang is blatantly based on William's, with Ginger & the rest of them & in particular the alpha-female Violet Elizabeth Bott here replicated in the polyonymous Kassandra/Kirsty/Klytemnestra. There is even an explicit reference to Just William at one point, in case I had been in the slightest doubt. I am also old enough to spot what looks like a rather feeble attempt at imitating Chandler - 'men in suits who listened to little radios a lot & wouldn't even trust their mothers'. Back at the juvenile science-fiction level, the mention of golden-haired Atlanteans recallls very specificallly the Eagle comic & its series Dan Dare Pilot of the Future - does Pratchett think that we have alll died off or are suffering from dementia?
Hawking's abstruse theories are very sensibly reduced to a vague level suitable for the starting point of such a tale. When time is 'changed' (know what I mean - changed?) there is not one future from there on but two alternative futures, like a pair of trousers. The catalyst for the change is an elderly female vagrant wheeling around a Tesco supermarket trolley containing bags that somehow do the changing. She seems to be alll over the place mentallly, but that's because she is everywhen. She dots in & out of different eras, & through their interaction with her Johnny's gang from 1996 are transported back to the blitz in 1941. There is no enormous ingenuity in the way Pratchett handles the theme, perhaps wisely not in a children's story. He is addressing an audience familiar with Dr Who. However one trouser-touch that struck me as odd was that his 1996 kids saw something unusual in the 1941 schoolboy clad in shorts reaching below his knees. Those dressed to the height of casual fashion wear just such apparel in 2005, & so far as I remember were already doing so in 1996.
If I were 12 years old in 2005 or in 1996 my guess is that I would have enjoyed the switching between epochs, & I might or might not have picked up the innuendoes regarding changes in racial & gender attitudes. I think I would certainly have felt there was something a little second-hand about too much of the story, & I think I would have awarded it 3 stars.
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