The wild ride leaves the Tootings in 1966, carless and in midpredicament. Expect further episodes.
More of a romp through time than a race against it (though a race does figure in), this second authorized sequel sends the reconstructed car with a mind of its own careening from the Cretaceous to the Jazz Age, Venezuela to the Wild West, while folding in references and tributes to Ian Fleming’s classic tale.
The Tooting family—Mum, Dad, Jem, Lucy and Little Harry—is again largely along for the ride, landing in the Cretaceous almost immediately when the car breaks down. The madcap escape from a pack of T. Rex becomes complicated when archvillains Tiny Jack and Nanny phone from the Tooting house far in the future. The race to support them leads to encounters with Counts Basie and Zborowski (the latter a racing enthusiast and the car’s original owner), two 16th-century queens of fabled El Dorado (who sheathe Chitty in gold before switching to a fudge-based economy) and, ultimately, the Potts clan from the original story. Berger festoons margins and full pages with monochrome sketches that nicely capture the helter-skelter pacing of Cottrell Boyce’s round of chases, kidnappings, narrow squeaks and mildly daring references to guns, liquor and “[t]hose leaves that make your head feel funny when you chew them.”
The wild ride leaves the Tootings in 1966, carless and in midpredicament. Expect further episodes. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: March 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5982
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Ian Fleming’s strong-minded auto takes a new road trip, and if its passengers are largely just along for the ride, it’s still a grand outing.
Powering the decrepit camper van that Mr. Tooting is restoring with a massive engine that he finds in the branches of a tree turns out to be like “putting the heart of a Tyrannosaurus rex into a hamster.” When he, his wife and their children, Lucy, Jeremy (Jem) and little Harry, climb aboard to take a spin, they find themselves not only roaring down back roads at terrifying speeds but soaring off over the Channel. Chitty, it soon becomes clear, has an agenda: It seems that its headlights have been repurposed atop the Eiffel Tower, its wheels are buried near the Sphinx and its body has somehow washed ashore in Madagascar. Along the way, Cottrell Boyce folds in winking references to the 1964 original and its author (including a certain heavily armed Aston Martin DB5 that James Bond fans will recognize). He also trots in strangely familiar would-be carnappers Tiny Jack and his unctuous but deadly Nanny, along with the odd giant squid or horde of poisonous spiders to keep the Tooting children on their toes. The book ends with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang back together, poised for further outings. Berger depicts the Tootings as a biracial family but otherwise adds to the tale’s antique flavor with frequent, retro ink-and-wash drawings. The old racer’s still good for another lap—and maybe more. (afterword). (Fantasy. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5957-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An imaginative premise, fledged in showy if sometimes overdecorated finery.
A corvid catastrophe threatens swashbuckling Blue Jay and his mixed avian crew after a treetop shipwreck leaves them to the tender mercies of a murder of crows.
Reputed to be “generally the most bloodthirsty and fearsome pirate to sail the high skies” (but not really that bad), Blue Jay flies the Jolly Robin from his ship the Grosbeak. Aside, however, from occasional harmless plundering, he much prefers sailing grandly through the clouds. Still, after falling into the clutches of his more viciously piratical cousin Teach and getting their flight feathers clipped, he and his scrappy crew—particularly Gabriel, a recent hatchling who grows in the tale from an oversized and ungainly bumbler into a magnificent Branta goose—must act. They rise to defeat the crows in a pair of savage battles with help from flocks of sparrows and an intrepid mole. In his debut as a novelist, Nash’s dialogue comes off as stilted (“This evening… I managed to successfully facilitate a visit between our unwitting weasels and a she wolf,” reports the mole), and his efforts to inject mystical notes with repeated references to geese as gods or godlings seem labored. Otherwise, he crafts a merry romp that is much enhanced by frequent formally drawn ink-and-color scenes of an airborne galleon and full-body portraits of birds posing in 17th-century costume.
An imaginative premise, fledged in showy if sometimes overdecorated finery. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-3264-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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