Customer Reviews

You're a Bad Man, Mr. Gum!

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Mr. Gum really is a bad man. He's slimy and gross and mean to children. But there's this little fairy who whacks him on the head with a frying pan whenever he neglects his garden. As a result, Mr. Gum's garden is the "prettiest, greeniest, floweriest, gardeniest garden in the whole of Lamonic Bibber." Lamonic Bibber is a town. (This book takes place in England, you see, where pan-whacking fairies and strange town names are the norm.) Anyhoo, enter Jake, "a massive whopper of a dog," who wreaks havoc on Mr. Gum's garden with a conga line of moles in party hats. Needless to say, Mr. Gum is not pleased. In fact, he is mightily bruised from the enormous pan-whacking that ensues. So our scowling villain decides to do away with Jake in a most heinous, hideous way. Fortunately, along comes Polly, a "girl worth liking," who's determined to foil Mr. Gum's plan even if she has to team up with a questionable old hero named Friday O'Leary.

And you know what? We think we'll just stop here and let you read it for yourself. You really should. It's a whopper and a half. And then pass it on to any kid you know who enjoys books by Bruce Hale, Jim Benton, or Jon Scieszka. Or any a kid you know who needs a laugh. Or any adult, for that matter. Wafflemongers especially.

My son laughs and laughs at You're a Bad Man Mr. Gum! He absolutly adores it, which to me is a sign of a great children's book. The book is whity and creative enough that you won't mind listening to it 200 times, since I swear that is how many times my son has put this on. I think laughter is so good for kids, and I highly recomend this for children in need of a book that will keep them giggling. The author does a fantastic job voicing the production. Five stars for this one!

I thought this book was so funny, I couldnt stop laughing. The writing style is so great the author adds a lot to lines to make them hilarious. Mr Gum is a really bad and evil man who happens to have the best garden in the world until the friendly town dog finds it and tears everything up. Mr Gum comes up with a plan to get rid of the dog. Polly a local girl finds out his plan and must come up with a way to stop him. Definetly a book to check out. I would highly recommend for 3rd grade and above. I will definetly check out this authors future books.

I got this for my 8 year old niece and she loves it. I wasn't sure if it would be too weird or dark or if her parents might be too conservative to approve of it, so I read it myself. Definitely strange in some parts, and that's a good thing. I expected that it would get left in the pile of other books and toys after Christmas, but I talked to her today (3 months later) and she says with a big smile that she's read it 5 times; plus her grandmother even called to thank me and tell me how hilarious it is. These ladies have good taste, I'd say.

A tip for others like me: I loved the first Mr. Gum book but I couldn't find any reviews of the following books in the series to see if they're worth ordering. But since it's British, there ARE reviews on Amazon UK! Check here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gum-Biscuit-Billionaire-Andy-Stanton/dp/1405228156

Based on those, I feel confident to buy this next one, or maybe all of them. Only the British adults who are probably as open minded as a bag of sticks gave it bad reviews, but even then they admitted that kids love them.

The truth is a lemon meringue!

It looks like I stand alone in my dislike of this book, but I just couldn't stomach the story. No, not a story -- just a mishmash of assorted slop. Here's an example:

"Ha, ha!" he laughed as Friday swerved to avoid a cascade of gray hamburgers. "This is just like Butcher's Darts!" He picked up a bucket of tripe and sloshed it across the road. "Take that, you Force for Good!" Mr. Gum rubbed his hands together gleefully and danced a cruel jig like a spiteful imp who'd snotted all over the presents on Christmas morning.

And they call this a children's book?

Children's books about miserly, nasty, no good, rotten old men go one of two ways. Either the old man is redeemed at the end and Tiny Tim lives, etc. etc. or you get to the end of the book and the miserly, nasty, no good, rotten old man hasn't changed a jot. He's just been thwarted. A kind of Count Olaf ending, if you will. The nice thing about Andy Stanton's Mr. Gum books is that they're written with a two-dimensional villain in place with whom you never, at any point, sympathize. Stanton is a fan of goofiness and is willing to pile a whole bunch of weirdness on top of itself in the hopes that there will be enough funny material to keep the kids ah-reading. For the most part, "You're a Bad Man, Mr. Gum!" works and even when it doesn't it just seems to be so pleased with itself that you can't help but feel some affection for it. This isn't the strongest silly book for kids I've ever read, but it has its heart in the right place. Nice but not exceptional.

Mr. Gum was nasty, to begin with. Nasty heart, nasty soul, nasty housekeeping skills, the whole enchilada. The one thing about Mr. Gum that is not nasty is his lovely little garden. Lest you attribute this to something noble in his soul, you should know that the only reason he keeps it tidy is that if he doesn't the angry fairy that lives in his bathtub will hit him repeatedly on the head with a frying pan. It's one of those deals. All would be well and good if it were not for a big massive whopper of a dog named Jake. Jake likes gardens and he especially likes Mr. Gum's garden. After getting whopped continually by the fairy every time Jake makes a foray into his yard, Mr. Gum comes up with a malicious plan to take care of the friendly canine forever. Now it's up to a little girl named Polly and an eccentric old man named Friday O'Leary to save Jake from Mr. Gum's nefarious intentions before (or possibly after) it's too late.

The jokes are what make the book work, because when they're on, they're on. When we first meet Mr. Gum, for example, we hear that "the bed was never made. (I don't mean that the duvet was never put back on the bed, I mean that the bed had never even been made. Mr. Gum hadn't gone to the bother of assembling it. He had just chucked all the bits of wood on the floor and dumped a mattress on top." What's more, "He would much rather hear a piano being demolished by illegal bulldozers than a Mozart concerto." I love that it couldn't be just any bulldozers. It would have to be ILLEGAL bulldozer. Jake, on the other hand is, "a furry wobbler and friendly as toast."

Individual British terminology appears to have been maintained, for the most part. Mr. Gum's punishment from the fairy is called "pan-whacks". A man is described as moving like "a footballer" rather than a soccer player, which is interesting. And continuing a trend I've seen in more than a few books for children this year, there is a glossary of amusing terms at the back of the book ala Lois Lowry's The Willoughbys (though many of these are referring to Britishisms and the like). Here's an example of one of the definitions then. "Scotland: It's a place near England where everyone's got beards, even the women. And the men wear skirts and everyone shouts a lot and has an okay time. By the way, it's freezing up there in winter, so don't bother." There you go then.

Sometimes the book is right on track and sometimes it skews a little too far towards the goofy. I mean the plot hangs together, which is important. You don't want to get to the end of a children's book and find the storyline erupt into some kind of Blazing Saddles/Monty Python and the Holy Grail unsatisfactory unfunny descent into madness. It doesn't do that, but at the same time there are things that never entirely work. Friday O'Leary, for example, is a pretty superfluous character. The jokes have moments when they just don't click. It's all going to come down to the personality of the person reading the book, really. If the kid reading "You're a Bad Man, Mr. Gum!" thinks that the inanity of a frying pan lobbing fairy is funny without explanation (and, of course, there never is one) then this will be the book for them.

Credit where credit is due to illustrator Chad Dezern too. While I've nothing against the British illustrations to this book, Dezern has a penchant for clear cut lines and heavy shading that complements Mr. Stanton's words nicely. Plus, some of his images are more than a little interesting if you're willing to peer really closely at them. For example, there is an image of a newspaper that Mr. Gum has purchased solely for the purpose of glaring at the picture of the boy on the front page (sometimes Mr. Gum just need a good glare at a child to make himself feel better). Of course, if you look at the newspaper, I mean really look, you'll read not a story about a 10-year-old burping champion (as the headline suggests) but a story about a 53-year-old India born Toronto resident named Yegmb Varbade. This probably wasn't intentional on the artist's part, but I don't think I'm the only reader who felt inclined to peer closely at the picture so as to tease out the story. It's not entirely clear to me whether or not Mr. Dezern would have actually have been responsible for that item, though. In the book there are some fun "found item" types of things in this book, like slightly crinkled pieces of sheet music and the like. Is that the work of the illustrator or of the Art Director? It's a bit unclear.

All in all "You're a Bad Man, Mr. Gum!" is almost a kind of post-Captain Underpants title. There are lots of pictures, making this an ideal early chapter book for those kids not quite ready for full 200-page pictureless work of fiction. What's more, I think that as a bedtime story, Andy Stanton's book is ideal for reading aloud. Teachers may wish to try it out on their third graders, fourth graders, and maybe even fifth graders too. It has some gaps and some oddities, but like that massive whopper Jake, its heart is in the right place. For a certain kind of kid, this book will answer their prayers.

I must give it a "5" and i've ordered all other titles for my libraries! My own children laughed themselves silly upon hearing it the first time and a year later we searched through the entire library collection FOR this title! When one of them utters the words, "super bonus story!" it puts a quick smile on all our faces. Fantastic use of language and phenomenal imagination. Keep writing Andy Stanton!

You know how everyone thinks it's easy to write a silly Ogden Nash-type poem until they actually try to do it? Then you realize how hard it is to be authentically silly. Well, that's sort of what happens here, in a good way. The stories are silly and the characters are totally off the wall. Drawings, typography, sentence structure, narrative viewpoint - all over the place. But,it all works and it all comes together to create a truly charming and satisfyingly upbeat and refreshing whole. I don't see how a kid's book gets much better than this.

We originally checked out this audio book from the Library to keep our kids occupied on a very long road trip. However, we laughed so hard during the cd, we ended up buying it. We still listen to it every once in a while several years later. Sometimes I think the adults in our family found it more humerous than our children. Very clean family fun!