Review: Billionaire Boy, by David Walliams

Billionaire Boy is the third novel from David Walliams, illustrated by Tony Ross. Joe Spud is the richest twelve year old in the world, after his father invents toilet paper that's wet on one side and dry on the other. Joe has his own cinema, race track, butler (he used to have an orangutan butler, but that worked out rather messily.) He's got eight billion in trust for when he gets older, but to keep him going until then his father gives him a million every now and then. The only thing he doesn't have is a friend.

Joe switches from his posh school (tights and Elizabethan ruffs, and lessons like 'Learning to step over the homeless person as you leave the opera' and 'History of wearing corduroy') to the local comp, where no one will know who he is. He quickly makes a friend, but thanks to his father's well meaning interference his secret soon comes out. Can Joe ever be happy?


Aimed at eight or nine year olds, this book pokes gentle fun at the 'Oh, if I won the lotto everything would be perfect!' school of thought. Joe has more money than he can possibly spend, but it doesn't make him happy – just friendless and vaguely overweight. Walliams has a deft touch and the comedy and drama never overwhelm each other.

And the moment where Joe picks his favourite books – The Boy in the Dress and Mr Stink – made me laugh. Both, of course, are written by David Walliams.


"Sit down!" said Grubb Two, as he or she put his or her hand on Lauren's shoulder to force her down onto the bench. Lauren, however, grabbed his or her hand and twisted it behind his or her back, and then pushed him or her to the ground. The other Grubb charged her, so Lauren leaped into the air and kung fu kicked him or her to the ground. Then the other one leaped up and tried to grab her, but she karate chopped him or her on his or her shoulder and he or she raced off screaming in pain.

It really is quite hard writing this when you don't know someone's gender.

Review: Nation, by Terry Prachett

When much is taken, something is returned...

Mau is not a man. Not yet. But his manhood test is almost over, and soon he'll return home.

But on his way home he is caught up in a tsunami, and when he reaches his island Nation he finds that his people have been washed away. He is alone...apart from the ghost girl, and, after a while, the refugees. And over the horizon, the war canoes of the cannibal Raiders are drawing ever closer...

Nation is a very hard book to categorise. It's a coming of age story, it's a survival story, it's a horror and a comedy and a drama. All of these things are true. But it's also a beautiful way of looking at a world so very close to our own. Mau and Daphne, the point of view characters, must learn to change the way they think to deal with their circumstances. And you will find your thinking changing along with theirs. If this book doesn't stay with you after you've read it, I'll be very surprised.

It's also a remarkably hard book to describe, because anyone hearing 'Well, it starts with a tsunami that kills everyone...' immediately puts it back down again. But this is not a book about death; it's about life, and belief, and about how your world can start again even after everything that gave it shape is gone.


"There was a boy called Mau. I see him in my memory, so proud of himself because he was going to be a man. He cried for his family and turned the tears into rage. And if he could, he would say 'Did not happen!' and the wave would roll backwards, and never have been. But there is another boy, and he is called Mau too, and his head is on fire with new things. What does he say? He was born in the wave, and he knows that the world is round, and he met a ghost girl who is sorry she shot at him. He called himself the little blue hermit crab, scuttling across the sand in search of a new shell, but now he looks at the sky and knows that no shell will ever be big enough, ever. Would you ask him not to be? Any answer will be the wrong one. All I can be is who I am. But sometimes I hear the boy inside cry for his family."

"Does he cry now?"

"Every day. But very softly. You won't hear him..."