Mr Gum and the Goblins by Andy Stanton is a gloriously silly story for 7 year olds, and the first thing to know is that one of the heroes is a gingerbread man.<\/p>\n
Lamonic Bibber is frozen solid. Snow and ice on the trees. Snow and ice on the ground. Snow and ice inside the Museum of Snow and Ice.<\/p>\n
Three friends are out in it, mainly because they fancied a takeaway kebab. Then a horrible wailing comes from the alley behind the sweetshop.<\/p>\n
The three are worth meeting. Friday O’Leary is a wise old man who occasionally bellows THE TRUTH IS A LEMON MERINGUE for no reason anybody can explain. Polly is nine and talks like nobody else in the book. Alan Taylor is the headmaster of Saint Pterodactyl’s School For The Poor, stands 15.24 centimetres tall and is made of gingerbread with electric muscles.<\/p>\n
The wailing turns out to be Mrs Lovely, who runs the sweetshop. She climbed Goblin Mountain for herbs, got caught in a blizzard and was attacked by something she never saw.<\/p>\n
Friday twirls his imaginary detective’s moustache, considers the words Goblin Mountain, Goblin Cave and Goblin River, and announces that it was badgers. Alan Taylor gently points out that badgers hardly ever attack Mrs Lovely.<\/p>\n
It was goblins. Big ones, weeny ones, sort of in-betweeny ones. One of them has two heads and spends the whole time arguing with himself. Their king sits on a throne made from a rusty dentist’s chair he found on the mountainside.<\/p>\n
It is worth reading for the narration alone. He wanders off mid-scene to tell you about a hobbit indoors microwaving his feet to keep warm. He describes church bells ringing out like absolute marshmallows. He is not remotely interested in making sense and your reader will love him for it.<\/p>\n
The best scene in the excerpt is the inn, where a roomful of grown men take one look at an old man, a nine year old and a biscuit, and start screaming about demons. One of them hides by disguising himself as a fruit machine.<\/p>\n
A small heads up on the humour. Somebody wees himself in fright, a goblin gobs on another goblin, and the innkeeper complains that an evil skeleton came in last week and did a poo on the carpet. That is the level throughout, and 7 year olds tend to think it is the funniest thing ever written.<\/p>\n
Mr Gum has history by this point, and the book cheerfully lists it, including the time he tried to poison a dog and the time he went after a fortune belonging to Alan Taylor.<\/p>\n
Curious about where a gingerbread man with a biscuit tin full of cash came from? Mr Gum and the Biscuit Billionaire is the one where Polly first claps eyes on him, up on a hill, offering her money so that she’ll be his friend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mr Gum and the Goblins by Andy Stanton is a gloriously silly story for 7 year olds, and the first thing to know is that one of the heroes is a gingerbread man. Lamonic Bibber is frozen solid. Snow and ice on the trees. Snow and ice on the ground. Snow and ice inside the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10984,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":8127,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Mr Gum and the Biscuit Billionaire","lr_seo_hook":"Mrs Lovely has been attacked on Goblin Mountain and Friday blames badgers."},"book_tag":[23],"age_group":[19],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[100],"class_list":["post-8131","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-funny-books","age_group-books-for-7-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-andy-stanton"],"yoast_title":"Mr Gum and the Goblins by Andy Stanton | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"Mrs Lovely has been attacked on Goblin Mountain and Friday blames badgers. For ages 7+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n