What do Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and 007 have in common?

I have to confess I had no idea myself until we picked out this awesome audiobook for a listen and checked out the cover…

What they have in common is author Ian Fleming, of course.

Both the suave, double agent James Bond, and the eccentric, flying car were born from Fleming’s vivid imagination, written into his books and then made immortal by Hollywood. The similarities between 007’s souped-up car and Chitty Chitty are unmistakeable, but there the resemblance ends.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was based on stories Fleming told his son Caspar at bedtime. It is the only children’s book that he ever wrote. If you only know the tale from watching the movie in your youth, you should really get your kids acquainted with the book – it is a terrific tale of adventure, written in effortless and suspenseful style, and, though published in 1964, dated in only the best of ways. The underlying theme of the book may be best summarized by these invigorating words of advice from Commander Caractacus Pott to his children Jeremy and Jemima:

“Never say no to adventures. Always say yes. Otherwise you’ll lead a very dull life.”

The book would be especially great for kids with a nascent interest in cars: Fleming clearly adored automobiles and the mechanics of how they worked. He was also clearly a collector of adventure-themed esoterica and sprinkles his tale with intriguing details about pirates, explosives and so on. Another passion seems to have been food, and there are some “truly scrumptious” descriptions of picnics and candy stores, and a devilishly rich “secret fudge” recipe at the very end. Which we cooked up and devoured, and which I am attempting to lose the extra poundage from by typing this really vigorously.

The audiobook, narrated by David Tennant is just super – perfect for a short road trip. Highly recommended.

A note about the book: If you are purchasing the book, make sure to get the 50th anniversary edition shown above. (There also seem to be some poor quality interim versions of the book produced when the original went out of print.) The original included delightful illustrations by John Burningham, which blended photography and drawings in a manner that was unusual for the times. The publishers were able to locate Burningham’s original artwork (you can read more about this endeavor here) and put together this wonderful version to celebrate the book’s 50th anniversary.

Activity: A fun activity for your young reader may be to listen to/read the book, watch the movie, and spot the differences. Hint: They are very different.

Access: The audiobook link above is through Audible at Amazon.com. Depending upon where you live in the world, you can likely also access this audiobook for free through your public library and other resources that I am blogging about, like Hoopla.

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