Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Over the Moon

Frank Cottrell Boyce's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Over the Moon is a time-travelling adventure for 9 year olds about a family stranded fifty years before they were born.

What happens

The Tootings are Mum, Dad, Jem, Lucy and the baby, Little Harry. They used to have a flying car. Now somebody has taken her, and they're standing outside Wembley Stadium on the thirtieth of July 1966 with no way of getting home.

Jem has a plan. Jem always has a plan.

Nobody wants to hear it, because it's ten minutes to three on the day of the World Cup Final and Dad has waited his whole life for this.

That's the joke the whole opening runs on. Jem is explaining that the greatest thief in history now owns the greatest car in history and could go back and steal the Mona Lisa while the paint is still wet. Mum is explaining that England are about to win four goals to two.

Only they've no tickets. And this is where it gets very funny.

A man in a Union Jack bowler hat has two going spare at two guineas each. Dad offers him a tenner. The man holds up the note, wants to know who the hairy geezer on the back is, and refuses to believe a picture of a Victorian scientist is money. Then Dad tries his credit card. The man is so sarcastic about it that Lucy has to lean in and explain what sarcasm is.

Mum suggests a cash machine. It's 1966. There aren't any.

So your reader is a few pages in and already knows more than the grown-ups do, which is a lovely position to read from. Dad announces things ("the word today is World Cup Final") with total confidence and gets nowhere. Lucy is fifteen and would rather be eaten by a mammoth than wear a miniskirt. Little Harry can say about four words and is the only one who is never wrong.

It moves fast and the history is worn very lightly. Rosettes and wooden rattles. Girls in dresses covered in black and white zigzags. A stadium you can hear but not get into. If your reader likes the sort of story where a family is completely out of its depth and mostly arguing about it, this is great fun.

What to read next

It does sit late in the Tootings' story, and it opens with the car already gone. Both texts show it. If you want to start where they first build her, the book where they first put Chitty together is in the library, back when their car was a camper van and an old engine that wanted its bodywork back.