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Imagination and Myth in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

ByAimee Davis

My only experience with the story of the magical car Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was through the lens of the 1968 movie. It was an iconic movie of my childhood with rascally characters and an eccentric family who embark on wild adventures together. Recently I discovered, with great excitement, that the story of this magical car was actually first a book written by none other than the creator of James Bond: Ian Fleming. 

The creation of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang came about from a series of bedtime stories Fleming told to his son.  These stories were drafted into a book while he was convalescing after a heart attack. This is a beautiful story about family, love, creativity, and just simple fun. Rife with intrigue as only a spy-writer could come up with,  the book is filled with hilarious encounters and escapes. 

The Potts family includes their eccentric father, Commander Caractacus Pott, his wife, Mimsie Potts, and their eight-year-old twins, Jeremy and Jemima. Their father tinkers all the time and fills their house with his crazy inventions. After inventing a highly successful piece of candy, he takes his earnings and decides the family needs a car. Of course the Potts family could not have just any car. This leads them to the green beauty that becomes Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Mr. Potts immediately falls in love with this car, despite the fact that it doesn’t even run, and his family goes along with him out of love and trust in his crazy imagination. 

The children know from the beginning that this isn’t just an ordinary car, but it takes a while for Mr. Potts to fully realize this. After meticulously rebuilding her, the family embarks on their first adventure only to be quickly lifted up in the air to avoid traffic. She truly is a magical car. This day of adventure leads to all sorts of mischief and takes them from the shores of England to the coast of France. The family finds themselves stranded on an island, lost in a cave, and eventually running from elusive robbers. All on their family vacation.  

While Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is the star of the story, the Potts family is a welcome example of family. Mr. Potts might be a wily guy, but he loves his family, and this is evident throughout the novel. The children find their father a little odd, but clever, and rejoice with him in his sorrows and successes. Overall, this is an amazing book showcasing humor, wittiness, and simple family love all through the lens of a crazy car. 

Fleming’s story is an excellent example of myth merging with reality. Lewis’s famous treatise, The Abolition of  Man, spends its first chapter arguing about the loss of myth and the push towards reality and reason. There is nothing about this car that defines reason, and quite frankly, there is nothing about Mr. Potts that is reasonable. Fleming takes everything natural to reason and flips it on its head. He takes the simple idea of a family, a car, and a family vacation and, through the lens of imagination—myth—he creates a beautiful story. So much of our lives are spent dissecting everything in order to decipher what is factual. We want to make sure we know the truth. When we only expose ourselves to this analytical way of life, we neglect imagination, and in the end become even more susceptible to propaganda. Stories that require us to “suspend imagination,” as  L’Engle used to say, are the ones that speak deepest to our hearts and to the hearts of our children.  

Reading this book aloud to my second-graders was always the highlight of my year. I ended the year with this book when we were all tired and so ready for summer break. Our year had been filled with a stack of rich read-alouds, but there was something about this one that always provided such a cheerful way to bring our days together to a close. The imaginative story of Mr. Potts and his extravagant inventions and the simple creativity of a magical car seemed the perfect send-off into the open days of summer.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is the only novel of this car written by Fleming, but Frank Cottrell Boyce wrote three sequels continuing the story of the magical car and the Potts family. There have been many publications of this novel over the years, but when searching for a copy of the original Fleming book, be sure to look for the version with the illustrations by John Burningham. His art is spectacular and does an amazing job of bringing the story to life.

Aimee Davis
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