Mr Gum and the Biscuit Billionaire

Mr Gum and the Biscuit Billionaire by Andy Stanton is a completely bonkers story for 7 year olds about a gingerbread man who thinks he can buy himself some friends.

What happens

Polly is nine and she is bored. Nothing ever happens in Lamonic Bibber and her favourite dog hasn't come round all summer.

Then a man appears over the top of Boaster's Hill. He's 15.24 centimetres tall. He's made of gingerbread with raisins for eyes. He has electric muscles, so blue sparks come off him when he moves, and he's dragging a biscuit tin absolutely stuffed with money.

His name is Alan Taylor and the first thing he does is offer Polly some cash so they can be friends.

She tells him that isn't how friendship works. He tells her it absolutely is, then invites her to his party and zooms off on his crunchy little legs.

Meanwhile Mr Gum is getting ready to go out. He hates children, animals, fun and every cartoon ever made. He draws extra scowls on his forehead with a felt tip. He roughs up his beard and sticks a couple of beetles and a photo of a shark in it, just to be on the safe side.

He and Billy William the butcher want that biscuit tin, and they come up with a plan. It takes Billy four hours of silent thinking and it is not a good plan.

The party is the best bit. Alan Taylor drives a sports car straight in through his own front door, runs over a grandfather clock and then flies everyone out through a stained glass window in a helicopter he keeps in the dining room. He lands it in a fish pond.

Reading this out loud is a joy. The narrator keeps butting in to tell you things you already know. Words get invented whenever an ordinary one won't do. There's a man called Friday O'Leary who arrives covered head to foot in pomegranate seeds and shouts THE TRUTH IS A LEMON MERINGUE for no reason anybody can explain.

Some of the jokes sail straight over a child's head. A little girl called Peter turns up with her dad, whose name is Rachel. Nobody comments.

The gross bits, so you know in advance. Billy William's butcher shop is revolting and the book enjoys it. Entrails, pig's brains, a cow's eyeball kicked across the floor. There's also one throwaway line listing Billy's hobbies, and one of them is trying to look up women's skirts. It's a single clause and nothing comes of it, but better you meet it first.

Polly's grammar is all over the place on purpose too. If that bothers you when it's read aloud, this isn't the one.

What to read next

Want another narrator who won't stop talking to them? The Beasts of Knobbly Bottom: Rise of the Zombie Pigs. Maggie narrates from a village with an even sillier name, and she opens by warning you off.