Tom Gates – Genius Ideas (mostly)

Liz Pichon's Tom Gates Genius Ideas (mostly) is a very funny diary for 9 year olds from a boy who's full of brilliant plans.

What happens

It starts with a terrible shock. Tom opens the bathroom door and finds Dad in bright blue cycling shorts. They're part of a new fitness regime, apparently. Tom needs his emergency caramel wafers just to recover.

Then he's late for school. So he has his first genius idea and writes his own late note (signed by "Mum", of course). What could go wrong? Quite a lot, when your bag is sitting on the button for the school loudspeaker and everyone hears your excuse.

There's plenty more going on. Sports Day is coming and Class 5F have never won anything. There's a school talent show, and Tom's band Dogzombies wants to be in it. And a rumour says DUDE3, the best band ever (according to Tom), might be coming to play.

Tom also gets picked as a buddy for Joey, a younger boy who seems to bump into everything. And his sister Delia's hair has gone GREEN. Of course Tom makes up a song about it. Wouldn't you?

Reading it alone feels a bit like borrowing Tom's own notebook. The words are hand-lettered and get HUGE whenever something big happens. Doodles fill the edges, and there are little comic strips, a secret monster alphabet to crack and a line to follow across four pages (it ends with a joke on anyone still following). Plenty of the laughs hide in the pictures, so it's worth looking closely at every page. It's the kind of book that disappears in a sitting or two.

Does your reader love a cheeky narrator and the everyday chaos of school and home? Then this one's a real treat. Embarrassing dads, a sister who growls in the mornings and a classmate like Marcus who always has something to say. Tom's very pleased with his ideas, even the ones that go a bit wrong.

This is the fourth Tom Gates book. The series starts with The Brilliant World of Tom Gates, and books two and three are in the library too. This one still reads fine on its own (a couple of little notes point back to book three for the full story).

What to read next

For more of Tom, Marcus and Delia in a shorter story, try Best Book Day Ever. It's book week at Oakfield, and Tom has big costume plans and one very particular book he's desperate to find.