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Title: Whaddayamean by John Burningham ISBN: 0-517-80066-7 Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY) Pub. Date: 01 August, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95

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Average Customer Rating: 1 (3 reviews)

Rating: 1
Summary: THERE IS NO ANSWER TO SUCH AN INANE QUESTION
Comment: .

This is one of the strangest and most disturbing children's books currently in print. The up-front and very loud message is "mankind is a despoiler of nature". Behind that is a confused mishmash of self-righteousness mixed up with a guilt-trip apolgizing for the human condition.

We are told that God "took millions of years to make planet Earth". For the creationists this would be a dilemma giving them a slightly longer voyage to Eden than prescribed in Genesis. On the other side the post-Darwin generations would all know the planet was still cooking at only a few million years after Day 1.

Most kids keep in touch with what NASA is up to. When Burningham gives us the line, "there is no life beyond Earth because God couldn't make it work", you can only shake your head. Maybe a stint in NASA's Martian meteorite lab could be useful for our John.

He goes on to say ... When God perfected Paradise on Earth he caused a deep sleep to fall on the people except for two young children. God invited the two children to embark (superman style) on an orbit or two of the earth to look at the state of the world... and verily, God said, " I do not like what I see"

CUT !! ...

... There's a little problem here with plot development and continuity. Just see what's on the next 8 pages. We are given the full environmental catastrophe which could be taken straight from some "Greenpeace" propaganda. We have pollution; forests chopped down, ice caps melting and starvation.

Work this one out. After God finished making an earthly paradise, He had a long nap, He woke up, and earth was still paradise and then He caused all the people to fall asleep (except young Clark and Lois). The big question leaps out:- just who did all the environmental destruction?

Our two young eco-warriors go around hectoring the industrialists, the priests and the military telling them "God said you must change your ways". How much mayhem can all these people be responsible for when they were all asleep?

Further stretching the bounds of logic we have the children telling the priests "you must stop quarrelling amongst yourselves". They answer " 'Oh if God said to tell us then we must stop quarrelling' said the people who did speak for God."

Go figure.

This book poses as something worthy, with its fashionable green and spiritual theme. Look closely and you will see only a disturbing morass of unenlightened confusion.

FOOTNOTE: In the USA the title of the book is "Whaddyamean". In the UK ( whEre the book originated) there is only one D in the title. From here this book gets only a D minus rating. By the way, the pictures are OK.

Rating: 1
Summary: GOD ONLY KNOWS
Comment: .

This is one of the strangest and most disturbing children's books currently in print. The up-front and very loud message is "mankind is a despoiler of nature". Behind that is a confused mishmash of self-righteousness mixed up with a guilt-trip apolgizing for the human condition.

We are told that God "took millions of years to make planet Earth". For the creationists this would be a dilemma giving them a slightly longer voyage to Eden than prescribed in Genesis. On the other side the post-Darwin generations would all know the planet was still cooking at only a few million years after Day 1.

Most kids keep in touch with what NASA is up to. When Burningham gives us the line, "there is no life beyond Earth because God couldn't make it work", you can only shake your head. Maybe a stint in NASA's Martian meteorite lab could be useful for our John.

When God perfected Paradise on Earth he caused a deep sleep to fall on the people except for two young children. God invited the two children to embark (superman style) on an orbit or two of the earth to look at the state of the world... and verily, God said, " I do not like what I see"

CUT !! ...

... There's a little problem here with plot development and continuity. Just see what's on the next 8 pages. We are given the full environmental catastrophe which could be taken straight from some "Greenpeace" propaganda. We have pollution; forests chopped down, ice caps melting and starvation.

Work this one out. After God finished making an earthly paradise, He had a long nap, He woke up, and earth was still paradise and then He caused all the people to fall asleep (except young Clark and Lois). The big question leaps out:- just who did all the environmental destruction?

Our two young eco-warriors go around hectoring the industrialists, the priests and the military telling them "God said you must change your ways". How much mayhem can all these people be responsible for when they were all asleep?

Further stretching the bounds of logic we have the children telling the priests "you must stop quarrelling amongst yourselves". They answer " 'Oh if God said to tell us then we must stop quarrelling' said the people who did speak for God."

Go figure.

This book poses as something worthy, with its fashionable green and spiritual theme. Look closely and you will see only a disturbing morass of unenlightened confusion.

FOOTNOTE: In the USA the title of the book is "Whaddyamean". In the UK there is only one D in the title. From here this book gets only a D minus rating. By the way, the pictures are OK.

Rating: 1
Summary: Whaddayamean
Comment: What a fictitious account of God. Where did this idea of a slumbering God come from? I would not recommend this book for either child or adult. The book uses negative generalizations concerning God, and thrusts the responsiblity of saving the world on the shoulders of children so that he may come visit them again AFTER they clean it up.