7.4 /10 1 Votes
Illustrator Jim Russell Publication date April 1976 Pages 174 pp (first edition) Originally published April 1976 Publisher Viking Press Awards Carnegie Medal | 3.7/5 Goodreads Language English Media type Print ISBN 0-7226-5195-3 Country United Kingdom | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Genres Children's literature, Literary realism Similar Jan Mark books, Carnegie Medal winners, Children's literature | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Thunder and Lightnings is a realistic children's novel by Jan Mark, published in 1976 by Kestrel Books of Harmondsworth in London, with illustrations by Jim Russell. Set in Norfolk, it features a developing friendship between two boys who share an interest in aeroplanes, living near RAF Coltishall during the months in 1974 when the Royal Air Force is phasing out its English Electric Lightning fighters and introducing the SEPECAT Jaguar.
Contents
Mark won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. She also won a prize for children's novels by new writers, sponsored by The Guardian newspaper.
Atheneum Books published the first U.S. edition in 1979, retaining the Russell illustrations.
Origins
Jan and Neil Mark moved to Norfolk in 1969 and lived "directly under a flight-path, with Lightning fighters from RAF Coltishall taking off 200 feet above the roof". According to her obituary in The Guardian, she wrote her debut novel Thunder and Lightnings for "the Kestrel/Guardian prize for a children's novel by a previously unpublished writer", and won it.
Plot summary
Andrew Mitchell moves to Tiler's Cottage in East Anglia. He goes to his new school and meets Victor Skelton in General Studies class. The two slowly become friends and do things together, including going to RAF Coltishall to see the aeroplanes, which are English Electric Lightnings. Victor is devastated when he discovers that his beloved Lightnings are to be replaced with Jaguars.