Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Race Against Time by Frank Cottrell Boyce

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Race Against Time by Frank Cottrell Boyce
Buy Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Race Against Time by Frank Cottrell Boyce at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Confident Readers
Reviewer: Linda Lawlor
Summary: The Tooting family are in terrible trouble. A tiny but very evil villain is trying to steal Chitty, and their attempts to escape have whisked them back in time (landing them, incidentally, right in front of a hungry Tyrannosaurus Rex). What is Chitty up to now?
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 234	Date: September 2012
Publisher: Macmillan
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 9780230757745
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There's nothing like a good villain to spice up a tale, and they come in all shapes and sizes in this, Frank Cottrell Boyce's second book about Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The previous story ended with them trying to flee Tiny Jack, a nasty piece of work with a seriously horrid Nanny and a fondness for feeding people to his pet piranhas, and as this book opens they find themselves nose-to-nose with a dinosaur. A real, live one, with her mind firmly fixed on lunch.

Of course, after a few heart-stopping moments they manage to escape all the prehistoric beasties (well, more or less: you'll have to read the book to see what that means!) and they have a lot of fun using Chitty's Chronojuster to zoom around various time zones. The only down side is that back home in the future Tiny Jack is having a party to which he's invited the whole street — in the Tootings' house. They need to get back and confront him before he wrecks the place completely, but as ever Chitty has her own ideas about where — and when — they should go. She hankers after a reunion with Count Zborowski, the original owner of the marvellous car back in 1921, although she gets a little miffed with him when she discovers he's built a second version of her. It's sleek and white and elegant, and it goes really fast, but of course it doesn't have all those interesting little extras...

They accidentally take part in the Prix d'Esmerelda's Birthday Cake motor race, find some remarkable uses for the ultra-sticky spiders' web they've acquired, save a not-exactly-mythical city with a recipe, and even get a shiny make-over for Chitty. There is fun and good food, some embarrassing parent-dancing and dozens of moments of sheer scream-aloud terror. There's even some sadness too as they realise they can't change history to help someone Lucy has grown very fond of. And then, just when you think it's time for them to go home, put their feet up and relax with a nice cup of tea, they get the nastiest shock of all.

Frank Cottrell Boyce is a masterly author in his own right, and in this story he manages (ably assisted by Joe Berger's delightful illustrations) to write a funny and exciting book while remaining firmly in touch with Chitty's literary past. The Tooting family spend a large part of the book searching for Mr and Mrs Potts and their two children, who drove Chitty back in the sixties, and the Count who so loves racing fast cars was actually a real person, the owner of the Paragon Panther upon which Ian Fleming based his magical car. Sadly, the creator of Chitty and Bond died not long after he had written the first adventures of the wondrous car, and it is intriguing to wonder what new escapades Chitty might have enjoyed had he lived.

The Tootings never quite accomplish most of their goals in this book (apart from the main one, which is to survive) and like its predecessor the story ends right at the beginning of a new quest. But don't worry — the ending doesn't feel in the slightest like one of those irritating cliff-hangers, just the promise of a third thrilling outing for the magical car and its family. The only problem facing readers will be how to control their impatience while they wait.

You can certainly read this book as a stand-alone, but it's much more fun if you read Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again by the same author. And, obviously, you'll want to go right back to the original Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming, if only to see how Chitty's adventures began.

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