Johnny and the Dead [Paperback]

Terry Pratchett (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 9 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up

Twelve-year-old Johnny Maxwell can see the dead. And he’s got bad news for them: the council wants to sell their cemetery as a building site. But the dead won’t take it lying down…


From the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“One of the best and one of the funniest author’s alive.”
—Independent


From the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Sir Terry Pratchett is one of the most popular authors writing in the UK today. He is the acclaimed creator of the Discworld(R) series, the first title in which, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. Worldwide sales of his books are in excess of 65 million, and they have been translated into 36 languages. He has written a number of titles for younger readers, including The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, which won the Carnegie Medal in the UK, and Nation, which was a Printz Honor Book in the US. He was awarded an OBE in 1998, and a Knighthood in 2009 for his services to literature.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Corgi (August 17, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0552551066
• ISBN-13: 978-0552551069
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.6 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,222,466 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Terry Pratchett sold his first story when he was fifteen, which earned him enough money to buy a second-hand typewriter. His first novel, a humorous fantasy entitled The Carpet People, appeared in 1971 from the publisher Colin Smythe. Terry worked for many years as a journalist and press officer, writing in his spare time and publishing a number of novels, including his first Discworld novel, The Color of Magic, in 1983. In 1987 he turned to writing full time, and has not looked back since. To date there are a total of 36 books in the Discworld series, of which four (so far) are written for children. The first of these children's books, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, won the Carnegie Medal. A non-Discworld book, Good Omens, his 1990 collaboration with Neil Gaiman, has been a longtime bestseller, and was reissued in hardcover by William Morrow in early 2006 (it is also available as a mass market paperback (Harper Torch, 2006) and trade paperback (Harper Paperbacks, 2006). Terry's latest book, Nation, a non-Discworld standalone YA novel was published in October of 2008 and was an instant New York Times and London Times bestseller. Regarded as one of the most significant contemporary English-language satirists, Pratchett has won numerous literary awards, was named an Officer of the British Empire "for services to literature" in 1998, and has received four honorary doctorates from the Universities of Warwick, Portsmouth, Bath, and Bristol. His acclaimed novels have sold more than 55 million copies (give or take a few million) and have been translated into 36 languages. Terry Pratchett lives in England with his family, and spends too much time at his word processor.  Some of Terry's accolades include: The Carnegie Medal, Locus Awards, the Mythopoetic Award, ALA Notable Books for Children, ALA Best Books for Young Adults, Book Sense 76 Pick, Prometheus Award and the British Fantasy Award.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You don't really live until you're dead, September 21, 2005

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Johnny and the Dead (Paperback)

Johnny Maxwell is just a normal twelve-year old kid, or at least he tries to be. Things just seem to happen to him that don't happen to anyone else - aliens inside a computer game surrender to him and name him their Chosen One, for example (as told in the first book of this series). Compared to that adventure, seeing dead people almost seems rather prosaic. The Trying Times Johnny has been living in have advanced past his parents' shouting and Being Sensible About Things to Phase 3, which sees him now living with his grandfather. He often takes a short cut to school through a local cemetery, and it is there that he meets the Alderman, the long dead and buried Alderman. His friends Yo-less, Bigmac, and Wobbler can't see dead people the way Johnny suddenly can, but events soon convince them that Johnny isn't just fooling around with them. Johnny meets all of the dead people in the cemetery, all of whom are quite put out when they learn that their cemetery, a place which the rules of being dead say they cannot leave, has been sold by the city (for only five pence) to a corporation planning on building office buildings there. Since Johnny is the only human who can see them (and why Johnny can see them is rather a mystery, although the Alderman thinks it is because he is too lazy not to see them), the dead look to him to save their eternal resting place. Stopping a big corporation from doing something the city has granted them the legal right to do is no easy task, especially for a twelve-year-old boy and his friends, but Johnny is wonderfully resourceful.

The ending of this book didn't have much spark to it, but overall Johnny and the Dead is an even better read than the first Johnny Maxwell novel Only You Can Save Mankind. It also rings quite distinctly at times of the type of humor showcased by the author in his Discworld novels. There is one bit early on that is just hilarious. Wobbler puts the idea in Johnny's head that dead people basically lurch around like the zombie types in Michael Jackson's Thriller video, and this indirectly leads to the Alderman trying to moonwalk in the cemetery. The dead people as a whole put a lot of life into this book, oddly enough. Among the fascinating, entertaining dead folks we meet are an ardent suffragette, an inventor who is quite proficient at manipulating electronic equipment, a brilliant man named Einstein - Solomon Einstein the taxidermist, and a dyed-in-the-wool Marxist who is quite disappointed at the way things have gone in the world since his death. The vibrant personalities of the dead men and women more often than not clash in a number of very funny ways as they all try to cope with modern life or the lack of it.

This book does stand up fairly well on its own, but the characterization of Johnny and his friends is not detailed enough for you to really get to know them without having read Only You Can Save Mankind already. This is considered juvenile fiction, but as with everything Terry Pratchett writes, men and women of all ages, providing they have at least a nascent sense of humor, will find much to enjoy and laugh about in these pages.

0 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars stupid, stupid, stupid!, February 24, 2007

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Johnny and the Dead (Paperback)

This book is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BORING!!!!!!! I think I'd rather eat the paper than read it! My friend gave it to me to read cos she said terry pratchett was really good BUT IT WASN'T! I dont like terry pratchett- I've tried Five of his books and I still cant get to the end of the 2nd chapter!!!! Dont waste money on this idiotic book- it was sooo bad that for a while after I read it I didn't even feel like reading cos I was SCARED- yes, SCARED- of finding such a bad book like this one! If you are a fan of this book then you might as well be a fan of eating feet! I dont even think Johnny and the Dead derservse 1 star! Dont waste your time!