It reminds me very much of Neil Gaiman

bittersweet. Life is really wonderful and full of stuffs. :-) And interesting. Full of stories. Not all sunshine and rainbows and unicorn farts, of course. That isn't interesting. ;-)

The second in his Johnny Maxwell trilogy, and sixth young adult novel overall, Terry Pratchett’s Johnny and the Dead was published in 1993, twenty-two years after his first novel (The Carpet People) and ten years after his first Discworld novel (The Colour of Magic). Set in the village of Blackbury, a sort of Pratchett-ised standard of suburbia, it sees Johnny and his friends trying to carry on with the normal lives that most 12-year-olds live; hanging out in the mall, trying to avoid getting beaten up by older siblings, and coping with the well-meaning attention of parents. When Johnny starts seeing the dead (post-senior citizens, not ghosts) however, and they find themselves caught up in a campaign to save the local cemetery, life soon becomes more complicated.

Read the rest of the review at https://trackofwords.wordpress.com/2015/03/27/johnny-and-the-dead-terry-pratchett/

Slightly disappointing - barely 3 stars

I normally quite enjoy YA or even children's books, but somehow i never really connected with Johnny Maxwell, maybe because i know Pratchett can do ( and mostly does) so much better.

In this second installment in the series Johnny gets the ability to talk to the dead, just as the local cemetery is being sold for property development, we get some long over-expended passages about the dead leaving their graves and roaming about, it's somewhat funny at first, but quickly gets old.

I think i will leave the last book in the series and enjoy the very last Discworld novels instead.

Pratchett has managed to write a very realistic British childhood while not being a child at the time of writing. Unfortunately that includes using the term ‘gay’ as an insult which was prevalent in the 90’s when I grew up. It hasn’t aged well but indicative of the time. I’m amazed he was aware of the culture.

This one neatly follows on from the last abs involves the dead hanging around in the local cemetery. Obviously I like this book with the location alone!

Although great as a stand-alone, it does follow some of the story from before like the divorce and council estate issues. I’m looking forward to the last in this trilogy.

I was packing up books to move and came across this one that I didn't know I had in my Pratchett collection and I don't have the others in the series. It looked cute and had ghosts, though, and it looked fun and short, so I gave it a try. It is very dated, with lots of early 90s pop culture references and jokes about being 'politically correct' and the gulf war. There's also a token black charachter named Yo-less who's personality seems to revolve around bucking black stereotypes but then seems to reinforce them in the process. A white character at one point suggests he's not black enough and jokes about reporting him to the rastafarians. So there's all that. The plot moves along nicely until it stagnates 3/4 of the way in, and while Terry Pratchett is rarely predictable, an overall point to the plot would have been nice besides a more overall philosophical statement. This is not, however, the first book in the series so maybe things are developed more in the first book, and I will probably read the others at some point so maybe my perspective will change at that point.

I listened to the audiobook of this with my boys. At the end, I asked for ratings:

me: 3 stars
8 yr old: 3.5 stars
10 yr old: 4 stars

I'll use their rating since they are more the demographic for this book, and round up.

Enjoyed this more than the first Johnny Maxwell book. Johnny has started seeing ghosts, and helps them to save the cemetery but while he's trying to save it the ghosts learn how free they can be, not tied to the cemetery, except for one. They learn to live the life they didn't live while alive! Pretty good read!

And I tried again. Same result - it's OK, but I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it to any kids I know.