Happy Friday! Today’s post features Johnny and the Bomb by Terry Pratchett.
This was the very first Pratchett book I ever read. I think I was about 12 or 13 years old, and my English teacher got tired of trying to keep me entertained whenever I finished the books we were assigned in class while everyone else was still at chapter 4, so she went to the library and got the box with all the English books (I went to school in Denmark. The selection of English books were literally in a cardboard box), put it in front of me, and told me to go nuts.
I don’t know why it took me a decade to return to Pratchett, because I remember laughing out loud at this book back then. And I’ll tell you, I was a grumpy kid. Me laughing freaked the other kids right out.
And amazingly, I still loved it upon rereading it. It’s the third and last book in the Johnny Maxwell series, but it is by far the best one. I love crazy Mrs. Tachyon and her time-traveling shopping trolley, not to mention her insane cat Guilty.
Johnny and the Bomb
by Terry Pratchett
Twelve-year-old Johnny Maxwell has a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This has never been more true than when he finds himself in his hometown on May 21, 1941, over forty years before his birth!
An accidental time traveler, Johnny knows his history. He knows England is at war, and he knows that on this day German bombs will fall on the town. It happened. It’s history. And as Johnny and his friends quickly discover, tampering with history can have unpredictable–and drastic–effects on the future.
But letting history take its course means letting people die. What if Johnny warns someone and changes history? What will happen to the future? If Johnny uses his knowledge to save innocent lives by being in the right place at the right time, is he doing the right thing?
