Tom Gates – Tom Gates is Absolutely Fantastic (at some things)

Liz Pichon's Tom Gates is Absolutely Fantastic (at some things) is a funny diary story for 9 year olds about a school trip Tom very nearly misses.

What happens

Everyone in Tom's class is off on a three-day activity trip. Rafts, climbing, kayaking and cabins with bunk beds. The only problem is that Tom scrunched up the letter weeks ago (oops).

So getting the form in becomes a mission. Mum ends up sticking DON'T FORGET notes all over the house, and he still leaves it behind on the day.

Home is busy too. A girl looking round the empty house next door starts a face-pulling contest with him through the window. His grumpy sister Delia has a new job she flatly refuses to talk about. And Mum has bought so many bananas that they're on everything.

That's where Tom's best discovery comes from. Poke a cocktail stick into a banana skin and the dots turn black, so you can draw on it! Before long there are banana doodles all over school (one of them looks a LOT like one of the teachers).

The second half is the trip itself, written as Tom's own trip journal. There's a midnight feast that ends in a popcorn explosion, a sock snake that lands on Mr Fullerman's head and a raft that mostly goes round in circles. Marcus Meldrew is in Tom's cabin, of course. Who else would boast about being brave and then get a stomach ache at the bottom of the climbing wall?

It really is like reading Tom's diary. Words grow and shrink across the page, doodles fill the margins and half the jokes hide in the drawings. There are even little monsters hidden through the book to spot. Most pages only have a few lines, so a confident reader could probably finish it in one or two goes.

This is the fifth Tom Gates book. Tom introduces everyone as he goes, so your reader won't be lost if they start here, but The Brilliant World of Tom Gates is where it all begins. (Fair warning, there's a how-to page for banana doodles at the back, so you might want to keep an eye on the cocktail sticks!)

What to read next

For more Tom, Derek and Marcus, there's Best Book Day Ever in the library as well. This time it's book week, a homemade Alien Scale Monster costume and a book Tom has been hunting for ages.