Johnny and the Bomb [IMPORT] (Paperback)

by Terry Pratchett (Author)
Key Phrases: poor old biddy, pickle factory, burger bar, Sir John, Paradise Street, Captain Harris (more...)

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Corgi Childrens; New Ed edition (1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0552529680
• ISBN-13: 978-0552529686
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #619,809 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 3 in The Johnny Maxwell Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book in Pratchett's Johnny Maxwell series, March 25, 2003

By	Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Johnny and the Bomb (Hardcover)

In my opinion, Johnny and the Bomb is the best book in Terry Pratchett's Johnny Maxwell trilogy. While classified as juvenile fiction, this book bears the strongest resemblance of the three to Pratchett's Discworld ideas and characterizations, containing much more social commentary, satire, and sidesplitting comedy than Only You Can Save Mankind and Johnny and the Dead. For such a normal twelve-year-old kid, Johnny Maxwell has some amazing adventures. This time around, he becomes a time traveler. Old Mrs. Tachyon, whom we have met briefly earlier in the series, is now revealed to be something more than a crazy bag lady; she is a time-traveling crazy bag lady. When she turns up injured, Johnny and his friends summon an ambulance for her and take her trolley cart (complete with her ornery cat Guilty) to Johnny's garage for safe keeping. Johnny notices that some of her bags seem to move of their own accord at times, and this discovery quickly leads to an episode of quite unexpected time travel. Eventually, the gang (Johnny, Wobbler, Bigmac, Yo-less, and Kirsty) go back in time to 1941, the very day preceding an unexpected and accidental bombing of one section of town by German bombers. They try to be careful not to mess the future up, but Bigmac finds himself in trouble with the police, Wobbler is assailed by a brat who keeps calling him a spy, and somehow the future gets mucked up a little bit in the process. Finding their way back home to the future is a difficult task; arriving back home without Wobbler and having to figure out a way to go back and retrieve him is even harder, especially since it involves convincing the 1941 authorities that the town is going to be bombed at a specific time.

The characters of Johnny's remarkable friends are fleshed out in this novel to a much greater extent than they were in the previous two novels. Yo-less, a black kid, is less than pleased to find himself dubbed Sambo by the folks living in 1941, and the extremely forceful young Kirsten is almost as upset about being treated like a "little lady." Johnny, for his part, often finds himself putting his sanity at risk by contemplating the ways and whims of time travel. I found this book to be hilarious; the time travel part of the tale is a little wild and crazy, but hypotheses about the different legs of the Trousers of Time is vintage Pratchett material. Old Mrs. Tachyon is a wonderful character, seemingly rather insane based on her thought processes and tendency to spout gibberish all the time, she is perhaps more sane than anyone else around her; time traveling is enough to warp anyone's mind, Johnny reasons. I was rather delighted to hear Mrs. Tachyon mumble the words "Millennium hand and shrimp" at one point because these are the very same words often spoken by Foul Ole Ron on the Discworld. This adventure really is the type of thing you might expect to find on Pratchett's famous planetary creation, and I daresay any Discworld fan should enjoy this book immensely. I find myself wishing for more Johnny Maxwell stories; I feel as if I know these characters now, and they are a fascinating, increasingly funny bunch of guys to hang around with.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another adult hooked on this supposed kids' series, November 1, 2006

By	R. Kelly Wagner "[e-mail]" (MD, United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Johnny and the Bomb (Hardcover)

For the Terry Pratchett fans out there, nothing more need be said. It's Pratchett, you want to read it, the only reason you've been hesitating is because it's marked as a kids book (juvenile, young adult...) But this one isn't just for kids. As with any Pratchett book, there are layers and layers, and some of them wouldn't be obvious to kids at all.

For example, kids who have only seen the Batman movies, and not the original TV show, will miss it entirely when Mrs. Tachyon is saying "dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner..." and continues a few more times between interruptions, finally ending with "dinner, dinner, Batman!" which is where adults (at least my generation) will realize she's not saying dinner, she's humming the theme song. Also, kids the age of our protagonists, 13 or so, may not recognize the "red shift" when they get to it; that's usually covered a bit later in the science curriculum, such as college physics.

The protagonists are Johnny, and his friends Wobbler (who wobbles), Bigmac (who is large), and Yo-less, who is apparently the only black in Blackbury who doesn't say yo. They are joined in this book by Kirsty/Kasandra (she changes her name each week), who is hyper-intelligent and socially even more inept than the others. Each of this team has his own strange store of skills or knowledge. These talents turn out to have entirely different implications when travelling in time than they do in their own time. Bigmac's car-stealing abilities (which some parents may object to in a kids' book) turn out to be impaired when trying to steal a car that doesn't have power steering and power brakes. On the other hand, Yo-less's lack of cool is suddenly changed when he puts on period clothing and suddenly looks, as Johnny says, as though he plays the saxophone in a band. Yo-less does, though get exposed to the more primitive social prejudices of 1941, as does Kasandra. And Bigmac finds out that the skinhead symbols and attitudes that he wears only as a social item suddenly have real meaning, and it's not pleasant. OK, there's a bit of a moral or two snuck in here, about thinking about what things mean. There is also at least one moral that readers one and all will ignore, just as the characters do, about following advice (and about giving it).

Johnny has been working on his World War II project for school since the previous book, "Johnny and the Dead." One of the funny bits in the book is how, whenever a kid claims he's doing "a project," he winds up with all sorts of information that is unsuitable for kids, and/or hitherto classified or secret; the remembered horror of school projects makes all the adults give in so that they don't have to think about it any more!

Other reviewers have described much of the plot, so I won't repeat it here. One thing that some readers may wish to note about this plot is that it isn't just time travel, it's alternate history as well, and for kids this may serve as an introduction to the whole sub-genre of alternate history. Meanwhile, some of the high points:
* Mrs. Tachyon's cat, Guilty - and his tastes in food.
* The ice that forms on the characters during their last-minute rush for the air-raid siren.
* The importance of pickles.

The series has no noticeable sexual content, and no real bad language; the most dangerous things in it for young readers are the ideas, which may make them *gasp* think! It may also make them lifelong Pratchett addicts. In the opinion of an existing Pratchett addict, there's nothing at all wrong with that!

5.0 out of 5 stars Saving The Best For Last, December 22, 2008

By	Steven Daniel Clubb "Netrigan" (Pawtucket, Rhode Island) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Johnny and the Bomb (The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy) (Paperback)

Terry Pratchett's Johnny Maxwell trilogy is a fun and light-weight series of books. Okay, some of the slang and references the kids use can be a bit cringe-worthy, having been written by someone who has left childhood behind a long time before, but there's an undeniable charm that keeps you going despite the occasional groan.

The series reaches it high point here with Johnny and his friends journeying back to WWII, trying to put right on their second trip what they accidentally put wrong on their first. Pratchett avoids a lot of the pitfalls of the time-travel genre with his "pants trousers of time" theory, which allows them a great deal of freedom in their journey (since every outcome leads to possible futures, none of which are essentially bad), but brings a level of suspense to the proceedings that was absent in the early efforts. Their mission isn't to keep the Germans from winning the war or anything so melodramatic, but to reunite all the friends in the present. While failure will mean... free burgers for life.

A fitting and enjoyable conclusion to a enjoyable trilogy of books.