Tom Gates – Excellent Excuses (And Other Good Stuff)

Liz Pichon's Tom Gates Excellent Excuses (And Other Good Stuff) is a funny diary for 9 year olds about a boy with an excuse for EVERYTHING.

What happens

It's the school holidays and Tom has two whole weeks off. Then Mum gets a letter from his teacher, Mr Fullerman. Apparently a vicious dog chewed up Tom's review homework (he made it up).

So there's no sleepover at Derek's until it's done again. Tom grabs a thick-looking book off the shelf, which turns out to be all about trees, and helps himself to the words on the back. Before long Mr Fullerman thinks Tom is a bit of an expert on trees!

Things don't get much easier back at school. There's a toothache he's been hiding from Mum since the holidays (a dentist trip means no sweets). Mr Keen puts him and Derek in the school band, which plays instruments made out of recycled rubbish. And their own band, Dogzombies, still needs a drummer.

This is the second Tom Gates diary, after The Brilliant World of Tom Gates. It looks just like a real diary someone has scribbled in. The hand-lettered words grow HUGE when he's excited and shrink again when he isn't. There are doodles in the margins, lists, posters and notes from Mr Fullerman tucked in between.

The pictures carry plenty of the laughs too. Granny's homemade biscuits are shaped like fish (with BIG stary eyes). Derek's old swimming trunks are covered in teddy bears, and of course Amy Porter notices.

Tom is cheeky and very pleased with himself. He sings a song about how weird his big sister Delia is. He dangles embarrassing drawings of her on a fishing line behind her head while she's talking to her boyfriend.

His excuses aren't exactly a good example. At school he blames a lurgy that got all over his homework. Then Dad turns up at the classroom door, waving it at him. You can probably guess how that goes down with the class!

Anyone who has ever tried to talk their way out of homework will probably see a bit of themselves in Tom. Short diary entries, big words and drawings on most pages make it an easy one to race through.

What to read next

The next diary is Everything's Amazing (sort of). For another helping of Tom and his family straight away, try Best Book Day Ever, where book week means a homemade costume and a prize Tom REALLY wants to win.