The famous author of the James Bond spy novels also wrote one children’s novel, a story about an unusual car rescued and restored by an eccentric family.
Caractacus Potts is an impecunious inventor who finally has a success with a new kind of candy. With the profits from his invention, he and his wife and son and daughter decide to buy a car. After looking around, they find an elegant old junker and decide to bring it home.
A car so well-built, so carefully restored and so loved proves to be more than meets the eye, and with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, as they name the car, magical things begin to happen. Chitty takes the Potts on several suspenseful adventures, each chapter ending in a cliffhanger. If you make this the kids’ bedtime book, expect a lot of complaints when you stop at the end of the chapter.
Fleming maintains an innocent lack of realism in Chitty. Throughout the story, even with its suspense and many dangers, there is an assumption that no one would really hurt the children. Criminals kidnap them, but, despite threatening them with harm, are too tenderhearted to wake the children from their nap.
The book is delightful, and unusual in its appeal to both girls and boys. It deserves to be a children’s classic, and deserved a better movie than the one it got.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Barbara H. // Sep 17, 2007 at 8:33 am
I’m here from Semicolon’s Sat. review post. I enjoyed this movie as a child but I don’t think it ever occurred to me that it was also a book — or else I forgot. Sounds interesting, Ill have to look for it!
2 Terri B. // Dec 12, 2007 at 12:43 pm
I don’t think I ever heard about the book. And Ian Fleming at that!
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