-267x400.jpg)
"This zany fantasy adventure takes readers on a rollercoaster ride through the wild imagination of its 12-year-old hero"
Paperback In Stock £8.99 £8.09
View All Editions (1)
April 2023 Debut of the Month
Boasting a distinctive slick, quick, comic voice, Lach’s Langdimania debut lets readers loose in the imagination of a twelve-year-old boy. Having something of a madcap road-trip vibe, it melds imaginative flights of fancy, fantasy, and the realities of junior high life with psychedelic invention. Think The Wizard of Oz meets modern pre-teen movies.
While searching a Manhattan toy store for the perfect present for his last pre-teen birthday, Army (full name Abraham Armstrong Allen) selects a blue plastic ball (AKA a Thingamajig) from a basket. According to the sign, it “could do anything” and, thanks to Army’s wild imagination, it pretty much can.
He tells his school peers that the Thingamajig “keeps all of reality in motion” and decides it’s a “Langdim finder” — short for language and dimension. From this, Army comes up with the idea that it can transport him to other dimensions, in which he can understand the inhabitants’ languages.
And from this, he fantasises about being king of Langdimania. Thusly, ideas escalate in Army’s mind, and it’s not long before the whole school wants in on his imperial role-playing game.
As might be expected, things don’t end there, and Army winds up slipping between two worlds, on a quest to save The Girl, while also hoping to bag the Scarecrow role in the school production of (appropriately enough) The Wizard of Oz. It’s fast, it’s funny, and feels akin to watching a pre-teen movie driven by childhood adventures and pre-teen thought processes.
Langdimania is available to buy here at £8.99.
If you listened to music in the nineties and early noughties and haven’t heard of Lach (pronounced “Latch”) then a quick online search will have you wondering how on earth this can be. Now the Edinburgh resident and bona fide music legend has written his first novel, a genre-busting fantasy adventure for young adults with two heroes – one boy one girl – at its heart.
Read the full description
Langdimania has as its hero a high-school boy named Army, whose quest -- involving a talking pig, a floating girl and his trusty Langdim Finder, which transports him between his two worlds of the ‘real’ and the ‘imagined’ -- is to discover what this ‘imagined’ world can mean, and how it can be aligned with his ‘real’ world experience. Oh, and, in classic teenage style, to secure the lead in the school play and gain the attention of his dream girl, who becomes a hero of equal stature throughout the course of the novel.
Langdimania is a novel that, for young readers and adult readers of young-adult fiction alike, asks as many questions as it offers answers and raises weighty themes, including: identity and sense of self; otherness and difference; power and control; objective reality and subjective personal experience; moral accountability; teenage mental health; the discovery of romantic love; and pa-rental presence (or absence) and its effects – to name but a few.
A New Yorker by birth, Lach established the Antifolk music and arts movement in the 1980s, in reaction to the remnants of the folk music of the 1960s, and has been credited as a key influence on artists as well-known as Beck, The Moldy Peaches, Regina Spektor and Suzanne Vega, to name but a few. He recently made a cameo appearance in the much-heralded new documentary about the New York music scene, Meet Me in the Bathroom, and is featured in countless books on the music scene.
Having established himself as a musician and ringleader of the Antifolk movement, running cult venue The Fort and helping budding artists to launch their careers at venues like NYC’s East Village landmark venue Sidewalk Café, Lach made the move across the pond in the early 2000s to pursue his comedy career at the Edinburgh Fringe and went on to perform at venues like The Stand, Gilded Balloon and Voodoo Rooms, and touring the UK with his one-man show. His move to the UK was documented in a BBC Radio Scotland half-hour special and his monologue series The Lach Chronicles became a three-part BBC Radio 4 hit and listed as Top Radio Pick in every major UK paper.
Now, Lach has turned his creative attention to fiction and his debut, Langdimania , comes from very personal experiences: a father telling his son bedtime stories; a husband mourning the loss of his beloved wife; a grown man trying to make sense of his childhood experiences and his own unique brain and imagination; and an artist who is compelled constantly to extend the limits of his creativity.
the best books for teenagers
A Small Matter of Impending Catastrophe
A Murder Is Going Down
The Shepherd's Crown
Sebastien de Castell
Langdimania is full of journeys to the imaginative insides of your brain with brilliant and unique characters!
Langdimania is an impressive book that reaches to the corners of your mind. Lach is an imaginative author that truly explores every aspect of magic and the potential of dreaming. I like how this novel includes a wide variety of genres. For example, Fantasy, Teenage Mental Health, Reality vs Personal Beliefs/Experiences and many more. Langdimania is an extraordinary place where twelve-year-old, Army travels to every day. Whether that is during his after-school adventures, during Mr Dumont's TFI French Classes or Detention with Mrs Czernowski. During some extremely frustrating and different experiences, Army finds himself baffled with new abilities that seem to change everything and make it a whole lot more interesting. Langdimania is the special place that Army seems to go to in his Imagination. Or is it the reality?... Read Full Review
This is a magical adventure story about friendship and peace, that makes us think about what’s real and what isn’t. My favourite characters are Josiah the crow who is tough and brave, and Lucy the sheep who is cool and has peppermint tea.
Langdimania tells the story of a magical land – is it a dream land or real? – where animals can talk. Army thought he had created this imaginary world until he found that one of his friends at school, Wendy, was also going there. In this new land, Wendy was stuck in a bottomless well, and Army has to go and rescue her, he just doesn’t know how.... Read Full Review
The LoveReading4Kids Editorial Team have read and reviewed Langdimania and determined it is suitable for children aged 13-18 years old
Langdimania features in the following genres: Adventure Stories, Children's and Young Adult Fiction, Children’s, Teenage and Educational, Debuts of the Month, Recommendations, Fantasy / Magical, Featured Books for Young Adults, Funny, Featured Books for 13+ readers
Paperback. £8.09, down from the £8.99 cover price. In Stock.
Langdimania was written by Lach and published by The Book Whisperers
£8.09, reduced from £8.99. In Stock.
©PTC International Ltd T/A LoveReading is registered in England. Company number: 10193437. VAT number: 270 4538 09. Registered address: 157 Shooters Hill, London, SE18 3HP. Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy | Disclaimer
The National Year of Reading starts here. Join thousands of families and schools supporting reading for pleasure across the UK.