Published: 4th April 2011 
Publisher: Scholastic
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback
Genre: Junior Fiction
★ ★ ★ ★ – 4 Stars
All Tom Gates wants to do is get tickets to see his favourite band when they come to town. It’s not easy when he’s up against Delia, his weirdo big sister. All of his plans seem to get him into major trouble!
I wasn’t expecting this to be such a funny book. I was reading and actually laughed out loud at some of the things Pichon has written. It was such a different experience than Wimpy Kid where I disliked it almost immediately. The premise is the same (young kid, diary, shenanigans) but the reading experience and the content is so much better. It’s a case of English versus American which accounts for the differences and once you realise that you understand the different styles of humour.
I will admit, Tom is a little mean, but it’s childlike and a bit more innocent. The kind of annoying kid in class that make teachers want to retire early and hold back their exasperated sighs. It’s fairly harmless joking and being an annoying younger brother than actually being cruel or deceitful. You believe that Tom is being himself and not really thinking things through, there is no real intended malice in his actions.
He isn’t constantly like this though; for the most part, he is a young kid who is in a band with his friend, he is embarrassed by his dad’s clothes, wants to see his favourite band, and tries to impress a girl at school. When he gets in trouble he learns his lesson and there is a cheekiness about Tom that makes you smile, even when he is in the wrong.
One of the things I loved is that it’s very interactive with the inclusion of the pictures. Tom is a character who doodles in his school books and you experience his days through his drawings on the page as much as the words he’s written. It goes beyond one drawing per page, there are drawings through the text and pages where it is just drawings and a random array of Tom’s thoughts and emotions. It portrays a young boy’s book extremely well and I can’t wait to keep reading the series.
You can purchase The Brilliant World of Tom Gates via the following
Lost in a Good Book 