Andy Stanton’s Mr Gum and the Secret Hideout is a completely daft story for 7 year olds about two villains in a cellar and the clouds falling out of the sky above them.<\/p>\n
Mr Gum has a face as angry as a thousand walnuts and a beard that smells of menace and beer. He hates children, animals, fun, comics, birthday parties, books, Christmas and people called Colin.<\/p>\n
What he likes is snoozing, being horrible and secret hideouts. The one he’s found has rats, cockroaches and pipes that drip slime, which he says is exactly how he always pictured Heaven.<\/p>\n
Down there with him is Billy William the Third, a butcher, shovelling old meat into a furnace. They’re building up to something and they’re very pleased about it.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, up in the town, clouds are dropping out of the sky. FLOOOOOB. BUFFSH. One lands on a hen and gives it such a fright it lays an egg out of its mouth.<\/p>\n
Polly is nine. Friday O’Leary is an oldish man in a nice friendly hat who mainly thinks about yogurts. They’re the ones who notice.<\/p>\n
Polly works out that no clouds means no rain, which means no grass, no cows and no milk. Friday works out what that means for yogurts and is instantly ready to save the world.<\/p>\n
So they set up an office in the town square and call it the Department of Clouds and Yogurts.<\/p>\n
The story is really an excuse for the narrator to muck about, and he’s shameless. He tells you off for not being interested. He describes a lump of coal as twice the size of a lump of coal half the size of the one he’s describing.<\/p>\n
He repeats a joke about a photocopier until it stops being funny and then keeps going until it’s funny again. Your reader will spot exactly what he’s doing and love him for it.<\/p>\n
It reads aloud beautifully. The noises want shouting and the daft lists are better out loud than in your head.<\/p>\n
One thing to be ready for. Everybody speaks in dropped letters and squashed-up words. Polly says she’s been doing some ‘vestigations. A confident reader will romp through it. A child still working hard at sounding words out may want you alongside.<\/p>\n
The nastiness is entirely cartoon. Burnt eyebrows, a whack with a cricket bat, a butcher who enjoys other people’s misfortune, all of it daft rather than frightening.<\/p>\n
If they want more of this sort of nonsense from somebody else, Fing has the same trick of a narrator talking straight at you, with a family of very quiet librarians and the extremely loud daughter who bosses them about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Andy Stanton’s Mr Gum and the Secret Hideout is a completely daft story for 7 year olds about two villains in a cellar and the clouds falling out of the sky above them. Mr Gum has a face as angry as a thousand walnuts and a beard that smells of menace and beer. He hates […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10986,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":7418,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Fing","lr_seo_hook":"Clouds keep dropping out of the sky, and one lands on a very surprised hen."},"book_tag":[23],"age_group":[19],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[100],"class_list":["post-8133","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 Secret Hideout by Andy Stanton | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"Clouds keep dropping out of the sky, and one lands on a very surprised hen. For ages 7+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n