You’re a Bad Man, Mr Gum!

You're a Bad Man, Mr Gum! is the first of Andy Stanton's Mr Gum books, written for 7 year olds with a taste for the disgusting.

What happens

Mr Gum hates children. He hates animals, he hates fun, and he holds a particular grudge against corn on the cob. He lives in a big house he has turned into a tip. The insects in his kitchen cupboards are large enough to have faces, names and jobs.

His garden, though, is immaculate. The prettiest, greeniest, floweriest garden in the whole of Lamonic Bibber.

There is a reason for that. If he lets it go, an angry fairy turns up in the bath and sets about him with a frying pan.

Then Jake turns up. Jake is an enormous golden dog, friendly as toast, who gives the local children rides on his back and likes nothing better than rolling about on a good lawn.

You can see where this is heading. Jake finds the best garden in town. The fairy arrives with the frying pan. This happens daily, apart from Wednesdays, because dogs have Wednesdays off.

Three weeks in, Mr Gum is covered in frying-pan-shaped bruises and has had enough.

Here is the bit to know about first. His plan is to poison the dog. He buys rotten cow hearts from the butcher and leaves them soaking in rat poison overnight, and we watch him do it.

It's written as farce and the book never once lets you believe he'll manage it. Even so, a chunk of the middle is a man preparing poisoned meat for a lovely dog, so if yours is soft about animals you'll want to know that going in.

The person who overhears his muttering is nine year old Polly. Jake saved her life once and she is not having it.

The narrator is honestly the main event. He loses track of what the story is about and apologises to you. He starts a chapter, decides it ought to be a different chapter, and starts again. Chapter four is one sentence long, and the sentence is that Mr Gum had a cup of tea.

Polly's real name runs to about three lines, and he makes you decide whether you are her friend before he'll allow you to call her Polly instead.

Children who like jokes that mess about with the book itself will be delighted. Children who want a story to get on with the story may be less keen.

What to read next

The Twits is in the library too, and Mr Twit has years of old food in his beard. That narrator is just as happy to halt the story and ask you how often hairy men wash their faces, and the Twits treat animals about as well as Mr Gum treats Jake, which is to say appallingly.