Book Review - Michael

The Midnight Gang by David Walliams

This was a story about a little boy named Tom, a boy who has a large bump on his head, gets sent into the ER/old hospital named The Lord Funt Hospital located all the way in London. Tom meets a misshapen faced man with a badge that said Porter (someone who pushed trollies around the hospital) and he was so incredibly frightening, the boy screamed as loud as possible which made an echo down the deep dark corridors of Lord Funt. This story is about Tom finding out about these mysterious children in the ward who went out at midnight to go on an adventure for some reason. He decides to follow the children ending up being a member of the Midnight Gang. Very exciting I know but he has to complete the challenge of wheeling a crooked wheelchair around the basement floors of Lord Funt, which wasn’t very fun as it was almost impossible to wheel this wheelchair around. Book cover from first year of primary school to year 6. Everything that happened in the basement of Lord Funt was not normal because Tom finds out the Porter is making all the children’s dreams come true. This little girl (Amber) had a dream to be the first child to go to the North Pole so as told the Porter makes a real-life North Pole look a-like in the freezer. The opening was Exciting because there were already crazy things happening just like the scary Porter and the part about joining the Midnight Gang’s adventures. The events followed on by them carrying on, trying to complete more dreams and racing the sunlight back up to bed before the Matron catches them.

The Characters

The characters were:

Tom. He is twelve and goes to a posh boarding school. He has come to the hospital because he has hurt his head.

There is Amber. She is twelve and has broken both of her arms and both of her legs, so has been in a wheelchair for some time.

There is Robin. He is also twelve and he is recovering from an operation to save his eyesight, and for now can’t see a thing.

George is eleven and from the East End of London, which makes him a cockney. He is recovering from having his tonsils taken out in an operation.

Finally, there is Sally. She is just ten and the youngest of the group. Because she is so ill, Sally spends most of her time sleeping in bed. Sadly, that means she can’t come on adventures with the others.

The adults in this story are;

Nelly. She is downstairs in one of the grown-up's wards on who knows floor because there are about forty-four floors in Lord Funt Hospital. Nelly is ninety-nine years old, almost one hundred.

Hundreds of people work at Lord Funt Hospital. Among them are:

Porter. A lonely figure, whose real name is a mystery. His job is to move people and things around the hospital, which he never seems to leave.

Matron. Despite running the children’s ward, she doesn’t like children at all.

Doctor Luppers. He has just become a doctor, and is rather easy to fool.

Tootsie. She is the hospital’s dinner lady. She brings meals round on a trolley to all the patients and seems to have all the food when really, she might just have a nacho and a drop of cheese. She is not like the others because she is very kind.

Nurse Meese. She is the tired-looking nurse, who never ever seems to get a night off work.

Dilly. She is one of the hospital’s cleaners. You can always tell where she has cleaned as there will be a long trail of fag ash.

Mr. Cod. He is the old chemist. He has a hearing aid and thick glasses. Mr. Cod runs the pharmacy in the Hospital.

Sir Quentin Strillers. He is the upper-class hospital principal, and is in charge of everyone and everything.

From outside the hospital there is Mr. Thews, the headmaster of Tom’s school, St Willet’s Boarding School for Boys.

These characters are described perfectly and I don’t think David Walliams missed anything about them. The characters did not change as they stay the same through-out the whole story. There were friends between all the children apart from Sally but luckily Tom was her friend but the others were against her.