Status
Call number
Collection
Publication
Description
A hilarious, touching and extraordinary new fable from David Walliams, number one bestseller and one of the fastest growing children's author across the globe. Joe has a lot of reasons to be happy. About a billion of them, in fact. You see, Joe's rich. Really, really rich. Joe's got his own bowling alley, his own cinema, even his own butler who is also an orangutan. He's the wealthiest twelve-year-old in the land. But Joe isn't happy. Why not? Because he's got a billion pounds... and not a single friend. But then someone comes along, someone who likes Joe for Joe, not for his money. The problem is, Joe's about to learn that when money is involved, nothing is what it seems. The best things in life are free, they say - and if Joe's not careful, he's going to lose them all...… (more)
User reviews
Mr Spud (Joe's father) soon broke up with his wife, and lived in a massive house with his son. Joe soon moved schools, and found a friend there called Bob. He made wonderful friends with him - until one day, a new girl called Lauren came, and this made Joe have a girlfriend straight away. When finally Bob found out, he and Joe fell out...
It turns out that because all Joe wanted was a friend, Mr Spud had bought Lauren to be his son's friend - Lauren was pretending to like Joe, and all went fine until one day when Joe tried to kiss Lauren.
Weirdly, it also turned out that Lauren was an actress, plus she was hanging out with another boy the other day.
When Joe found out, he made friends with Bob again, kicked Lauren out of his life and went to live with Bob. But why do that then stay in a massive house with about a thousand rooms? Well, you'll have to wait and see! ;)
This book was great, funny, amazing, sad, lovely and most of all: FUN. David Walliams must be rich by the amount of amazing books he's sold!!
This story was about a boy whose father is a billionaire. and how being rich and being fat has stopped him being able to make friends. So he starts a new school
It's funny and emotional. It covers bullying and shows how important friendship and being a part of something is, as well as about how money doesn't necessarily bring happiness, and definitely how you can't buy friendship or love.
The things that let this down a little for me personally, was how many British cultural references like names of products (sweets/newspapers) and terminology needed explaining. There was an assumption that everyone reading this would know what they were. Mr Walliams is not considering a wider international audience. And also every now and then going off on a tangent away from the story to say something funny. It distracted from the story and the pace.
Otherwise a fun read