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Summary
Summary
Sell the cemetery?
Over their dead bodies . . .
Not many people can see the dead (not many would want to). Twelve-year-old Johnny Maxwell can. And he's got bad news for them: the council want to sell the cemetery as a building site. But the dead have learnt a thing or two from Johnny. They're not going to take it lying down . . . especially since it's Halloween tomorrow.
Besides, they're beginning to find that life is a lot more fun than it was when they were . . . well . . . alive. Particularly if they break a few rules . . .
The second book in the Johnny Maxwell trilogy.
Author Notes
Terry Pratchett was on born April 28, 1948 in Beaconsfield, United Kingdom. He left school at the age of 17 to work on his local paper, the Bucks Free Press. While with the Press, he took the National Council for the Training of Journalists proficiency class. He also worked for the Western Daily Press and the Bath Chronicle. He produced a series of cartoons for the monthly journal, Psychic Researcher, describing the goings-on at the government's fictional paranormal research establishment, Warlock Hall. In 1980, he was appointed publicity officer for the Central Electricity Generating Board with responsibility for three nuclear power stations.
His first novel, The Carpet People, was published in 1971. His first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. He became a full-time author in 1987. He wrote more than 70 books during his lifetime including The Dark Side of the Sun, Strata, The Light Fantastic, Equal Rites, Mort, Sourcery, Truckers, Diggers, Wings, Dodger, Raising Steam, Dragons at Crumbling Castle: And Other Tales, and The Shephard's Crown. He was diagnosis with early onset Alzheimer's disease in 2007. He was knighted for services to literature in 2009 and received the World Fantasy award for life achievement in 2010. He died on March 12, 2015 at the age of 66.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Terry Pratchett's sequel to Only You Can Save Mankind, Johnny and the Dead, 12-year-old Johnny and his friends are hanging around a graveyard when the hero begins to see ghosts-and uncovers the local government's plans to sell the site for development. Johnny and his schoolmates' mission to save the cemetery provides ample opportunity for the author's signature wit. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate) Johnny Maxwell (the everykid hero of Only You Can Save Mankind, rev. 7/05) can see the dead -- and they're not so different from the living. Many are elderly. Most are eccentric. All are quite bored. After Johnny brings a radio to the cemetery to help them pass the time, the restless ""post-senior citizens"" discover a new purpose to their afterlives: they must fight corporate expansion to prevent the imminent relocation of the cemetery. At first Johnny is the voice of this endeavor, but soon the dead are venturing further from their graves, communicating with the living via telephone, and ultimately freeing themselves from earthly boundaries. Pratchett's signature humor manifests itself in waggish dialogue (""Why bother with such a big stone arch?"" ""It's just showing off...There's probably a sticker on the back saying 'My Other Grave Is a Porch'"") and absurd juxtapositions (the frumpy dead attempt Michael Jackson's ""Thriller"" dance). A neatly twisted conclusion has Johnny saving the cemetery just as the dead realize they don't need it anymore (but ""we do,"" explains Johnny). While the lingering moral -- respect the past -- is oddly mundane, its implementation in this uproarious spook story is anything but. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Gr. 5-8. In the previous volume of the Johnny Maxwell trilogy, Only You Can Save Mankind0 (2005), aliens solicited Johnny's help. Here Johnny is buttonholed by dead people worried about a developer's plans to bulldoze their cemetery. Assisted by three skeptical but loyal sidekicks, Johnny delves into city history and mounts an eloquent plea for preservation, while the ghosts revel in modern technology and pop culture. Aspects of the telling are imperfectly blended, especially the thread involving Johnny's ineffable sense of connection to a local battalion decimated in World War I. Nonetheless, Pratchett's fans will revel in the idiosyncratic touches, such as the quirky euphemisms for dead 0 ("breathily challenged," "post-senior citizens"), and his thematic juggling act, which incorporates wit and slapstick, philosophies of the afterlife, and a gritty view of a struggling, working-class community ("The point about being dead in this town is that it's probably hard to tell the difference"). First published in England in the early 1990s, which accounts for some dated references, the trilogy was previously available to U.S. readers only in a book-club edition. --Jennifer Mattson Copyright 2005 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-7-In this sequel to Only You Can Save Mankind (HarperCollins, 2005), 12-year-old Johnny discovers that he can see, hear, and communicate with spirits in the town cemetery. The cemetery, the only spot of unblighted land in the town, is about to be bulldozed and developed by a large corporation, so Johnny and his friends set about trying to save it (and its denizens) from destruction. Unfortunately, no one particularly famous was ever buried there, so the boys' publicity plan seems doomed-until the dead take things into their own innovative and rebellious hands, and Johnny finds the courage to take a stand against all odds. Fans of Gregory Maguire's books will appreciate the tongue-in-cheek tone and wry humor, and the quarrelsome yet friendly chatter among the dead spirits is reminiscent of Eva Ibbotson's titles. The plot (kids versus big corporation, a la Carl Hiassen) is tied up rather too neatly, but that's beside the point. Readers will take immense pleasure in the jokes, some broad and some subtle and dry, that come sailing at them from all sides. This book stands alone easily, but after reading it, kids will want the first one.-Eva Mitnick, Los Angeles Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Fresh from leading the ScreeWee fleet across hostile game space and back to their own territory, Johnny Maxwell returns to champion a more local group of beings in need: the dead denizens of the local cemetery, slated for redevelopment into Modern Purpose-Designed Offices by United Amalgamated Consolidated Holdings. Pratchett's cry against the needlessly tragic rejection of communities and their histories is just as passionate as was his cry against war in Only You Can Save Mankind (2004). Johnny allows himself to be conscripted by the dead, whom only he can see. They are an agreeable assortment of sweetly loony characters including a former Alderman, a suffragist, a socialist and an inventor, who, along with the rest of their fellows, represent the collective history and culture of Blackbury. If the narrative turns a bit preachy at times, kids will nevertheless find themselves won over by both the dead and Johnny's basic sense of decency. Humor and honest pathos play off each other to make for an emotionally balanced whole, one whose resolution will be as satisfying to readers as it is to Johnny. (Fiction 10-14) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.