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Sto caricando le informazioni... Johnny and the Dead (Johnny Maxwell #2) (edizione 2006)di Terry Pratchett (Autore)
Informazioni sull'operaJohnny and the Dead di Terry Pratchett
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. There are certainly good things here. There is thought and care and humanity, maybe a bit too younger readers to get in fact. However there are a lot of smaller issues. The structure is odd, it spends a lot more time with the dead than your expecting rather than focusing on Johnny. It has less to say of Johnny personal life than the previous book and the dead are a less compelling group than the Scree-Wee from the last book. I might be a little biased on that as i do like aliens and videogames more as an aesthetic over the undead and civic responsibility anyway ;) . The writing also has some issues, the jumps between scenes are jarring.. although i did read an e-copy, those may not be as bad in a hardcopy. Also there are a number of points with multiple characters talking and it can be quite hard to tell who’s saying what. Anyway... i still liked it a lot in places although it doesn’t stand up to the previous book and i look forward to finishing the trilogy. A loose sequel to 'Only You Can Save Mankind', but it's also an excellent standalone novel, and I have a hazy memory I might have read it first. Johnny is an undistinguished child growing up in Blackbury, a Northern city in the 1990s. His parents are in the middle of getting divorced, and his friends are a rag-tag assortment - the fat computer geek, the skinhead with a heart of gold, and the black one who loves brass band music. Johnny's gift / problem is the ability to see things that other people don't. In Only You Can Save Mankind, this manifests as talking to the ScreeWee in his computer game, and having to engage with 'what if I was really trying to commit genocide on an entire other race of sentient beings? In Johnny and the Dead he becomes aware of the dead in the cemetery, which is due to be demolished to make room for a new office block. This gives rise to a sweet story, where the living work out the importance of knowing about the past, and the dead (who are definitely not Ghosts, just Dead) work out the importance of letting go of the past and moving on to be free and happy. . 'You listened. You tried. You were there. You can get medals just for being there.' It's a warm and uplifting book that I think is one of my favourites of all the Pratchetts, with his trademark humour and a deep love of the world. 'Johnny blinked. And looked around at the world. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, wonderful. Which wasn't the same as nice. It wasn't even the same as good. But it was full of ... stuff. You'd never get to the end of it. It was always springing new things on you.' It was just a matter of time. I wrote a few days ago that we’ve been exploring some of our local cemeteries during the lockdown, piecing together the stories of the families buried there, and judging people on the quality of their gravestone poetry. Inevitably, this reminded me of one of my few childhood books that I brought with me to London: Terry Pratchett’s Johnny and the Dead, which I promptly unearthed (‘exhumed’?) from my bookshelves. I don’t remember the circumstances of this purchase – I never read the other Johnny Maxwell books and this was long before I started reading Discworld – but my parents got it right. There’s something ineffably British about Pratchett’s story of a young lad who realises to his alarm that he can see dead people in the local Victorian cemetery. And, as he’s apparently the only one who can talk to them, he feels that he’s the one who has to break the news. Because the town council has decided that the cemetery is no longer relevant, and has decided to sell it off to a glossy modern company for a glossy progressive modern office block. Needless to say, the dead are not happy… For the full review, please see my blog: https://theidlewoman.net/2020/05/14/johnny-and-the-dead-1993-terry-pratchett/
Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2005 (Vol. 73, No. 23)) 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. 2006 Jane Harrington (Children's Literature) The second book in “The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy” gets off to a good start (“Johnny never knew for certain why he started seeing the dead…”) but quickly becomes a surprisingly poor read from the prolific author of Discworld, and the “Bromeliad Trilogy.” The story loosely revolves around twelve-year-old Johnny and his fight to keep a cemetery from being destroyed, though most of the pages are devoted to other happenings that are not well-connected to this central theme. Attempts at parody and humor sometimes work--as in many of the conversations between Johnny and the “post-life citizens”--but most fall flat, or are too dated or too tied to the author’s own (British) culture. There is a level of crassness, too, that borders on offensive, as in this description which seems intended to show what social misfits Johnny’s friends are: “And then there was Johnny, and Wobbler, and Bigmac, who said he was the last of the well hard skin-heads but was actually a skinny kid with short hair and flat feet and asthma who had difficulty even walking in Doc Martens, and there was Yo-less, who was technically black.” Young readers on this side of the pond are very apt to consider that racial remark a slur-- and probably will not have a clue what “well hard skin-heads” and “Doc Martens” are. Brit-lit can be great fun, but there clearly could have been a heavier editorial hand in the Americanization of this book. Overall, a disappointing offering from such an experienced writer. 2006 È contenuto inHa l'adattamentoÈ riassunto in
Juvenile Fiction.
Juvenile Literature.
Science Fiction.
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Johnny Maxwell's new friends not appreciate the term "ghosts," but they are, well, dead. The town council wants to sell the cemetery, and its inhabitants aren't about to take that lying down! Johnny is the only one who can see them, and and the previously alive need his help to save their home and their history. Johnny didn't mean to become the voice for the lifeless, but if he doesn't speak up, who will? In Johnny Maxwell's second adventure, Carnegie Medalist Terry Pratchett explores the bonds between the living and the dead and proves that it's never too late to have the time of your life -- even if it is your afterlife! .Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)823.914Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
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I don't think the Johnny Maxwell books are Pratchett's finest, but it's a nice reminder that he didn't JUST write the Discworld books, and had a wider range than that.
This reads like a more comedic version of Neil Gaiman's [b:The Graveyard Book|2213661|The Graveyard Book|Neil Gaiman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1531295292s/2213661.jpg|2219449], basically, although they're very different beasts. Gaiman's book is about a kid growing up in a graveyard, but Pratchett's is about Johnny finding that he can see the ghosts in a graveyard, to which antics and hilarity ensue.
Since it's for kids, I found it light to read and finished it overnight. Thumbs up overall! ( )