Truckers

The Bromeliad Trilogy: Truckers (The Bromeliad Trilogy) Terry Pratchett   —   $5.39   —   Book product page Rating:

Fiction, Fantasy, Juvenile

Nomes are small folk who live on a time scale approximately ten times faster than humans. Their lives are nasty, brutish, and short. So Masklin decides he's going to take the group on a ride in one of the humans' trucks, because wherever they get to has got to be better than trashcan raidings and foxes. And where they get to is the Store.

Thousands of Nomes live in the Store, and barely even speculate about what is Outside, because the Book of Arnold Bros. (est. 1905) has stated, All Things Under One Roof. But they're going to have to learn, because the Thing, a small device Masklin's folk have looked after since before anyone can remember, has woken up. And it tells them the Store is going to be destroyed.

This story is told with Pratchett's typical satiric flare, and illustrates the dangers of getting trapped in a style of thinking. He does this in a form easily understood by children— the Store Nomes know that the Store is everything, and that women can't read because thinking will explode their brains, and the child knows better , and so identifies with Masklin and his companions when they point out the fallacies in that kind of thinking. And of course, the struggles the Nomes go through in their attempts to not only escape the destruction but profit thereby are very entertaining.

There was a British television adaption some years back that caught the spirit of the book very well. Alas, it is not available in the US, but the book is, and is suitable for interested eight-year-olds... and any adult who likes Pratchett.