Review: Witty, clever children's story -- if you like Roald Dahl, you'll love this!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 22, 2014
Ian Probert's JOHNNY NOTHING reminds me a bit of the 2004 film "It Could Happen to You," as told by Roald Dahl.  You remember the film - a guy wins the lottery and wants to do the right thing, but his greedy, repulsive wife just starts shopping herself to death.  Well, in JOHNNY NOTHING, 10-year-old Johnny MacKenzie inherits a one-million pound cash card from his late Uncle Marley, with a chance to turn that million into ten million if he can make the money grow by the end of one year, even by one penny.  But he's got a greedy, repulsive mother who gets her hands on the cash card and gets busy shopping herself to death.  Which means it's pretty unlikely Johnny will have a cent left by the end of twelve months, much less see a profit.Johnny himself is a lovable loser.  He has absolutely nothing - no money, no friends, no shoes (he wears his father's "foot-me-downs"), no toilet paper, and the worst parents on earth.  So it's no wonder the kids at school call him "Johnny Nothing."  His mother, Felicity MacKenzie, is rude, obnoxious, and insanely materialistic - she strokes Johnny's cash card, calling it "my PRECIOUS," and it doesn't take her long to run through most of Johnny's inheritance (and not one penny is spent on Johnny).  It's no accident that Johnny's uncle is named Jacob Marley, and his attorney is Ebenezer Dark - the message from Dickens's A CHRISTMAS CAROL runs all through this novel.  Ours is a materialistic world, in which the pursuit of money often seems its own goal.  And when Johnny tries to take things in another direction, he quickly learns that it isn't easy to escape the baser human instincts.  But there's a surprising (and much appreciated) turnaround in the novel's final pages (if you've seen "It Could Happen to You," you can guess what it is).What makes this little story rise above similar tales is the darkly humorous narration.  The narrator, who speaks directly to the reader and peppers his storytelling with clever asides and pop culture references, has clear insight into the characters he introduces.  We see how awful Johnny's mother is, how lost and helpless Johnny feels, and how hard it is to do the right thing, even with the best of intentions.  Fans of Roald Dahl will delight in the novel's perverse perspective on the human condition, a perspective made all the more telling by the truths it reveals.JOHNNY NOTHING is supposedly a children's book, aimed at the Middle Grade market, but I had a lot of fun with it myself.  There are great similarities in style and message to Dahl's popular JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH and CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (both of which focus on very poor children facing very adult problems).  I loved those books when I was a child (eons ago!) and I would have loved this, too.  It's a story about unlikely heroism in the face of a very cruel world.  But there's an uplifting message that wins out in the end - there is goodness in the world, Probert tells us, even if it's often very hard to see.I highly recommend JOHNNY NOTHING to young readers who enjoy clever, witty stories with a hint of dark humor.  The pictures are also a lot of fun (I recommend reading this on a Kindle Fire to get the full impact of the illustrations).  This is a well-written, intelligent, fun novel.  And a sequel would be much appreciated![Please note:  I was provided a copy of this novel for review; the opinions expressed here are my own.]