Digging where you shouldn’t is the whole business of The Day I Found a Wormhole at the Bottom of the Garden, Tom McLaughlin’s very silly science fiction for 7 year olds.<\/p>\n
It opens by asking your reader to think of the best day of their life. Then it suggests a tube of Fruit Pastilles in which every single sweet turns out to be a green one. That is the tone from line one and it doesn’t wander off.<\/p>\n
Billy’s best day was his ninth birthday, when his nan gave him a metal detector. Since then he has made his parents’ lawn holier than a piece of Swiss cheese. Total haul so far is some ring pulls off fizzy pop cans and one coin from the mid 90s.<\/p>\n
There’s one corner he has never dug. It’s past the blackberry bush and its spikes of doom, over the compost heap, through the boggy bit that smells odd, next to the abandoned shed. Mum and Dad call it the icky place. Billy has been scared of it for as long as he can remember.<\/p>\n
Today his parents are going shopping and Nan is coming over to babysit. Or, as Billy sees it, he is babysitting Nan.<\/p>\n
She’s the best thing in the whole book. She arrives with rock cakes for him, produced loose from inside her handbag, among the keys and the dirty change. He has never once got past the outer crust of one. She did knock out a handbag thief with one, mind, and got her photo in the local paper holding it up like a hand grenade.<\/p>\n
She has also been seen pointing the telephone at the television to get the snooker on.<\/p>\n
One thing worth flagging, just in case it’s a live issue where you are. Billy’s plan is to settle Nan in a chair with a very milky tea and something recorded so she nods off, then head down the garden alone with a spade. He knows exactly what he’s up to. The book thinks it’s hilarious. A reader currently experimenting along those lines may take notes.<\/p>\n
There’s also a history homework he’s been told to get on with, about meeting someone from the past. Keep that in mind.<\/p>\n
The book is in no rush. The title tells you what’s coming, and the whole first stretch is Billy working out how to get down that garden unsupervised. Sections are headed with the time of day, so it moves quickly and there’s a joke in nearly every paragraph.<\/p>\n
Shakespeare the French bulldog contributes mainly by licking Billy’s eyeballs. He has a small brain and enormous ears and gets mistaken for an angry rabbit.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, the Milk is a good one to follow it with. Another completely ordinary house that tips off the rails. A dad pops out for milk, comes back very late, and the explanation he gives gets more ridiculous with every page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Digging where you shouldn’t is the whole business of The Day I Found a Wormhole at the Bottom of the Garden, Tom McLaughlin’s very silly science fiction for 7 year olds. It opens by asking your reader to think of the best day of their life. Then it suggests a tube of Fruit Pastilles in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10998,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":7451,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Fortunately, the Milk","lr_seo_hook":"A metal detector, a boggy corner of the garden, and a history homework."},"book_tag":[1046],"age_group":[19],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[984],"class_list":["post-8965","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-sci-fi-books","age_group-books-for-7-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-tom-mclaughlin"],"yoast_title":"The Day I Found a Wormhole at the Bottom of the Garden by Tom McLaughlin | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A metal detector, a boggy corner of the garden, and a history homework. For ages 7+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n