Back to the Future (Based on the movie)

Volume XXV / Issue 5 - October 5 / 2018
Back to the Future
Back to the Future
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Back to the Future (Based on the movie)

Author: 
Robert Zemeckis
Bob Gale
Illustrated by: 
Kim Smith
Series: 
POP Classics
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Quirk Books (Distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada), 2018
44 pp., hardcover, $19.99
ISBN: 
978-1-68369-023-8
Grades: 
Preschool-grade 4
Ages: 
4-8
Review by: 
Janice Foster
5
Excerpt: 

Marty located the house of young Doc Brown and introduced himself. “My name is Marty and I’m from the future. I came here in a time machine that you invented, and now I need 1.21 gigawatts of electricity to get back to the year 1985.”

Doc didn’t believe him. So Marty took him to the time machine, but Doc had bad news. “There’s no plutonium in 1955, and only a bolt of lightning can generate that kind of power. Unfortunately, we never know when to where lightning will strike.”

In 1985, when teenaged Marty McFly test-drives Doc Brown’s newest invention, a time machine in a car, he suddenly finds himself thirty years in the past. Not only is he faced with the problem of returning to the future, he discovers that the electricity source of the time machine, plutonium, hasn’t been discovered. Also, his parents, George and Lorraine, are teenagers, and unless they fall in love, they will never have kids. Marty must find young Doc Brown. and with his knowledge of the future, particularly of the fact that on that very day in 1955 the town clock was hit by lightening at 10:04 p.m., perhaps they can use lightening to power the time machine back to the future.

The classic movie Back to the Future is filled with action, adventures, humour and great characters. Back to the Future, one of the latest Quirk’s Books’ “POP Classics” picture books, not only captures this exciting story of time travel in forty pages, it introduces younger children to the movie that has entertained families for over thirty years.

Canadian illustrator Kim Smith’s animated style of illustration, partnered with a simple text, captures the highlights in Marty’s time travel adventure. Right at the beginning, the illustrator sets the stage with the picture of the court house and the campaign to ‘Save the Clock Tower’. Together with the book’s humorous depiction of Marty’s dysfunctional family and his dad’s bully boss, Biff, the reader is prepared for the two-fold problem facing Marty when he accidentally finds himself thirty years in the past.

The large, boldly coloured illustrations accurately depict the characters and add humour to the story. The concise text and the flow of the illustrations make for a fast pace, creating that sense of urgency Marty is experiencing as he desperately tries to get George and Lorraine to fall in love and get the car back to the future.

Back to the Future makes a fun family read-aloud and a prelude to a family’s enjoying watching this movie classic together.

Highly Recommended
Reviewer: 

Janice Foster is a retired teacher and teacher librarian in Winnipeg, Manitoba.