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Narrated by Richard Mitchley
Terry PratchettUnabridged — 3 hours, 58 minutes
Narrated by Richard Mitchley
Terry PratchettUnabridged — 3 hours, 58 minutes
In Terry Pratchett's sequel to Only You Can Save Mankind, Johnny and the Dead, 12-year-old Johnny and his friends are hanging around a graveyard when the hero begins to see ghosts-and uncovers the local government's plans to sell the site for development. Johnny and his schoolmates' mission to save the cemetery provides ample opportunity for the author's signature wit. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Gr 5-7-In this sequel to Only You Can Save Mankind (HarperCollins, 2005), 12-year-old Johnny discovers that he can see, hear, and communicate with spirits in the town cemetery. The cemetery, the only spot of unblighted land in the town, is about to be bulldozed and developed by a large corporation, so Johnny and his friends set about trying to save it (and its denizens) from destruction. Unfortunately, no one particularly famous was ever buried there, so the boys' publicity plan seems doomed-until the dead take things into their own innovative and rebellious hands, and Johnny finds the courage to take a stand against all odds. Fans of Gregory Maguire's books will appreciate the tongue-in-cheek tone and wry humor, and the quarrelsome yet friendly chatter among the dead spirits is reminiscent of Eva Ibbotson's titles. The plot (kids versus big corporation, a la Carl Hiassen) is tied up rather too neatly, but that's beside the point. Readers will take immense pleasure in the jokes, some broad and some subtle and dry, that come sailing at them from all sides. This book stands alone easily, but after reading it, kids will want the first one.-Eva Mitnick, Los Angeles Public Library Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Fresh from leading the ScreeWee fleet across hostile game space and back to their own territory, Johnny Maxwell returns to champion a more local group of beings in need: the dead denizens of the local cemetery, slated for redevelopment into Modern Purpose-Designed Offices by United Amalgamated Consolidated Holdings. Pratchett's cry against the needlessly tragic rejection of communities and their histories is just as passionate as was his cry against war in Only You Can Save Mankind (2004). Johnny allows himself to be conscripted by the dead, whom only he can see. They are an agreeable assortment of sweetly loony characters including a former Alderman, a suffragist, a socialist and an inventor, who, along with the rest of their fellows, represent the collective history and culture of Blackbury. If the narrative turns a bit preachy at times, kids will nevertheless find themselves won over by both the dead and Johnny's basic sense of decency. Humor and honest pathos play off each other to make for an emotionally balanced whole, one whose resolution will be as satisfying to readers as it is to Johnny. (Fiction 10-14)
| BN ID: | 2940169157468 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Random House UK |
| Publication date: | 12/23/2010 |
| Series: | Johnny Maxwell , #2 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Age Range: | 8 - 11 Years |
Johnny never knew for certain why he started seeing the dead. The Alderman said it was probably because he was too lazy not to. Most people's minds don't let them see things that might upset them, he said. The Alderman said he should know if anyone did, because he'd spent his whole life (1822–1906) not seeing things.
Wobbler Johnson, who was technically Johnny's best friend, said it was because he was nuts.
But Yo-less, who read medical books, said it was probably because he couldn't focus his mind like normal people. Normal people just ignored almost everything that was going on around them, so that they could concentrate on important things like, well, getting up, going to the lavatory, and getting on with their lives. Whereas Johnny just opened his eyes in the morning and the whole universe hit him in the face.
Wobbler said this sounded like "nuts" to him.
Whatever it was called, what it meant was this: Johnny saw things other people didn't.
Like the dead people hanging around in the cemetery.
The Alderman -- at least the old Alderman -- was a bit snobby about most of the rest of the dead, even about Mr. Vicenti, who had a huge black marble grave with angels and a photograph of Mr. Vicenti (1897–1958) looking not at all deadbehind a little window. The Alderman said Mr. Vicenti had been a Capo di Monte in the Mafia.
Mr. Vicenti told Johnny that, on the contrary, he had spent his entire life being a wholesale novelty salesman, amateur escapologist, and children's entertainer, which in a number of important respects was as exactly like not being in the Mafia as it was possible to get.
But all this was later. After he'd gotten to know the dead a lot better. After the raising of the ghost of the Ford Capri.
Johnny really discovered the cemetery after he'd started living at Granddad's. This was Phase Three of Trying Times, after the shouting, which had been bad, and the Being Sensible About Things (which had been worse; people are better at shouting). Now his dad was getting a new job somewhere on the other side of the country. There was a vague feeling that it might all work out, now that people had stopped trying to be sensible. On the whole, he tried not to think about it.
He'd started using the path along the canal instead of going home on the bus, and had found that if you climbed over the place where the wall had fallen down, and then went around behind the crematorium, you could cut off half the journey.
The graves went right up to the canal's edge.
It was one of those old cemeteries you got owls and foxes in and sometimes, in the Sunday papers, people going on about Our Victorian Heritage, although they didn't go on about this one because it was the wrong kind of heritage, being too far from London.
Wobbler said it was spooky and sometimes went home the long way, but Johnny was disappointed that it wasn't spookier. Once you sort of put out of your mind what it was -- once you forgot about all the skeletons underground, grinning away in the dark -- it was quite friendly. Birds sang. All the traffic sounded a long way off. It was peaceful.
He'd had to check a few things, though. Some of the older graves had big stone boxes on top of them, and in the wilder parts these had cracked and even fallen open. He'd had a look inside, just in case.
It had been sort of disappointing to find nothing there.
And then there were the mausoleums. These were much bigger and had doors in them, like little houses. They looked a bit like garden sheds with extra angels. The angels were generally more lifelike than you'd expect, especially one near the entrance who looked as though he'd just remembered that he should have gone to the toilet before he left heaven.
The two boys walked through the cemetery now, kicking up the drifts of fallen leaves.
"It's Halloween next week," said Wobbler. "I'm having a party. You have to come as something horrible. Don't bother to find a disguise."
"Thanks," said Johnny.
"You notice how there's a lot more Halloween stuff in the shops these days?" said Wobbler.
"It's because of Bonfire Night," said Johnny. "Too many people were blowing themselves up with fireworks, so they invented Halloween, where you just wear masks and stuff."
"Mrs. Nugent says all that sort of thing is tampering with the occult," said Wobbler. Mrs. Nugent was the Johnsons' next-door neighbor, and known to be unreasonable on subjects like Madonna played at full volume at three a.m.
"Probably it is," said Johnny.
"She says witches are abroad on Halloween," said Wobbler.
"What?" Johnny's forehead wrinkled. "Like . . . Marjorca and places?"
"Suppose so," said Wobbler.
"Makes . . . sense, I suppose. They probably get special out-of-season bargains, being old ladies," said Johnny. "My aunt can go anywhere on the buses for almost nothing, and she's not even a witch."
"Don't see why Mrs. Nugent is worried, then," said Wobbler. "It ought to be a lot safer around here, with all the witches on vacation."
They passed a very ornate mausoleum, which even had little stained-glass windows. It was hard to imagine who'd want to see in, but then, it was even harder to imagine who'd want to look out.
"Shouldn't like to be on the same plane as 'em," said Wobbler, who'd been thinking hard. "Just think, p'raps you can only afford to go on vacation in the autumn, and you get on the plane, and there's all these old witches going abroad."
"Singing 'Here we go, here we go, here we go'?" said Johnny. "But I bet you'd get really good service in the hotel."
"Yeah."
"Funny, really," said Johnny.
"What?"
"I saw a thing in a book once," said Johnny, "about these people in Mexico or somewhere, where they all go down to the cemetery for a big fiesta at Halloween every year. Like they don't see why people should be left out of things just because they're dead."
"Yuck. A picnic? In the actual cemetery?"
"Yes."
"Reckon you'd get green glowing hands pushing up through the earth and swiping the sandwiches?"
"Don't think so. Anyway . . . they don't eat sandwiches in Mexico. They eat tort . . . something."
Excerpted from Johnny and the Dead by Terry Pratchett Copyright © 2007 by Terry Pratchett. Excerpted by permission.
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