Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Magical Car

by Ian Fleming, Joe Berger (Illustrator)

Overview

Ian Fleming’s beloved original text — illustrated by Joe Berger!

“Crackpot” is what everybody calls the Pott family. So when they go to buy a new car and come back with a wreck, nobody is surprised. Except for the Potts themselves. First, the car has a name. And she tells them what it is. Then they find out that she can fly. And swim. . . . Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a car on a mission to stop a criminal gang in its tracks — and she is taking the Potts with her! Jump into the world’s most loved magical car for her first adventure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763666668
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	03/12/2013
Series:	Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Series , #1
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	245,005
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Ian Fleming worked as a journalist, a stockbroker, and an assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence in the Admiralty in London during World War II, a job that amply qualified him for writing internationally best-selling thrillers about super-spy James Bond. Ian Fleming wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for his young son and died in 1964, two months before the book was first published.

John Burningham is one of the world’s most beloved children’s book creators. His work has received countless awards, including two Kate Greenaway Medals and a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor for It’s a Secret! With Candlewick Press, he is also the author-illustrator of Tug-of-War and The Way to the Zoo and the author of There’s Going to Be a Baby, illustrated by his wife, Helen Oxenbury. His work is featured in the collectors’ volume John Burningham. He lives in London.

Editorial Reviews

There’s no improving on perfection—in this case Fleming’s adventure story (featuring the unconventional family Pott and their magically refurbished motorcar) with the original, transcendent Burningham illustrations, first published in 1964. The confiding informality of the storyteller’s voice; the nonstop and immensely child-pleasing adventures; the spunk of young Jeremy and Jemima; and of course the ingenious personality of Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang herself—all combine to make an ideal family read-aloud. This handsome fiftieth-anniversary gift edition is ... so very welcome.
—Horn Book

This is why the book holds up, 50 years after its original publication: its sense of the world as an inexplicable but also miraculous place.
—Los Angeles Times Online

From the Publisher

Delightful! Sounding confiding, cheeky, and very British indeed, actor David Tennant relates Fleming's 1964 story of a magical car. After the Pott family acquires and restores CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG (who reveals her name with a customary series of coughs and sputters when she starts up), she takes them on all sorts of adventures—speeding down the motorway at over 100 mph, flying them to the perfect beach picnic, conveying them across the English Channel to France—and that’s just the beginning. Through it all, Tennant narrates with relish, especially when he gets to sound her GA-GOOOO-GA klaxon. It’s the perfect way to introduce a new audience to this charming British classic. J.M.D. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

MAY 2014 - AudioFile