Talk:Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang

Skrumshus/Scrumptious

To the IP who keeps changing this: don't. In the book the character is not known as Scrumptious, but Skrumshus. Stop changing it to the wrong version please. - SchroCat (talk) 16:08, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Authors in the navbox?

As is so well known, this tale is better known through the film than the book. Authorship is also divided between Fleming and Dahl. It's that rare thing too, a film that's better than its original book. A subjective viewpoint, but it's clear that Dahl deserves substantial credit for it, not Fleming alone.

Recent edits have removed the two authors from inside the navbox. When reverted, this was repeated with the explanation "Fleming is linked in the lead, so this is a duplicate link. Dahl only wrote the screenplay". I see this as inappropriate for several reasons:

• Dahl deserves credit and a link in the navbox. I would personally contend that he shares equal status with Fleming.
• Dahl deserves a link. Removing Fleming for reasons of duplication is no reason at all to remove Dahl as well.
• Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, like Fleming, is linked in both titlebar and navbox content, ie duplicated. Yet no-one is suggesting removing the lead article from the navbox.
• Fleming is linked in the title bar, but who reads titlebars? As a usability aspect, readers tend to only follow links from inside the body of a navbox, thus there's a good reason to favour duplication from their headers.

I'm raising this here as higher traffic than at the template. I think both authors should be restored to the navbox. Andy Dingley (talk) 08:34, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

• It is uncommon for these works templates to have the adaptation writers in them. The author of the original work belongs in the title as it is. The other works deserve equal treatment in the navbox. However the adaptations' creatives (directors/producers/writers) don't generally belong in the navbox.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:51, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

In this case it's more than an adaptation though, around half of the screenplay is additional to the novel - including several of the characters who make it to inclusion in the navbox (the family mostly don't, Dahl's Vulgarians do). After the film the screenplay novelisation was sold as a separate novel. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:17, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

The recent edits are an improvement. This navbox is now correctly titled in a way to indicate it is for the original novel. With the original author's name in the navbox title, there is no need for this name elsewhere in the nav box. There is certainly no need for an adaptation author's name in the nav box (the adaptation author has a separate nav box). The popularity of an adaptation is immaterial. Prhartcom (talk) 17:16, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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Not a novel but a children's story?

Surely, the Ian Fleming story is not a novel. It was written as three small books each ~ 46 pages, with pictures, written for children, which I read as a child. While the book based on the film, might pass for a novel, the Ian Fleming books, do not. This is not a put-down of the books, which I seriously loved as a child, and would still recommend. Also, I am not saying that it is not possible for children's books to be novels; they very clearly can. I am just putting forward that the original trilogy is not one of them. I will leave it at this, and only change things, if there is no convincing opposition. I have read the discussion above, on whether it should be book or novel; but I think that the discussion is too narrow, the categorizations, wrong Ian Fleming's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a series of three books. The distinction being made does seem to be akin to calling The Very Hungry Caterpillar a novel, which it plainly is not. --Samesawed (talk) 14:55, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Timing of composition

As i read it currently, the two paragraphs which address the composition of the book are in contradiction with each other (and, incidentally, with the sequence as given in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang). In the first paragraph we read In May 1961 Fleming sent his publisher the manuscripts for the first two volumes of Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang...Fleming suggested the Daily Mail cartoonist Trog....After Trog was forced to withdraw from the project, Cape commissioned John Burningham, who had recently won the 1963 Kate Greenaway Medal which implies that the book was started probably in 1960, certainly by 1961. In the second we have On 19 November 1963...Fleming was unwell, suffering a heart attack...Fleming suffered a serious, second heart attack that necessitated convalescence...one of Fleming's friends, Duff Dunbar, gave him a copy of Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin to read and suggested Fleming write up the bedtime story he used to tell his son Caspar each evening. Fleming attacked the project with gusto which implies the beginning of the writing was in 1963. Even if the project attacked was merely finishing up the book(s), the sequence is not clear to the reader. Happy days, ~ Lindsay^Hello 14:03, 3 March 2024 (UTC)