Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter One: Tom Jones and the Bottle Top Collection
Dead parents
Thomas
The house
A gated community
Arnold
Our old town
Barbara
Shock! Horror! Belly!
School
Class 6 W
Bribery
Time and motion
Money
Chapter Two: Grandpa Jones and the Funeral
Grandpa Jones
Shock! Horror! Drunk!
The Grandpa Jones list of things to do at a funeral
The moon and the stars
The deal
Chapter Three: Cleo and the Escape Plan
Cleo and the pinhead parents
Aunt Ruth and Uncle Robert
Cleo, the snake, and how to be instantly popular
Tom and the snake girl
Tom and Cleo
Cleo’s bright idea
The plan
Cleo’s house
Cleo, the archeologist
Friends in prison
Tom, the gardener
Tom
The escape hatch
The prison gates
Chapter Four: The First Day of Freedom
Escape
Cleo—snake-charmer, escape-expert, and Queen of the Nile
The right side of the fence
The phone call
Saturday—yabbies, bulls and being a carnivore
Lunch
Snob!
Chapter Five: The Gardens of Mercy
Outside the gates, okay
Mercy Gardens
Tom’s visit
Tom and Grandpa Jones
Chapter Six: Gobbledegook, And the History of Tom’s Family
Cleo
Gobbledegook
The history of Arnie and Grandpa Jones
Thick shakes
Uncle Robert, the pop-star
Chapter Seven: Cleo, the Genius
Cleo’s bright idea # 2
Tom, bottle tops, and Cleo the genius
Cleo’s letter
Long and loud
Tom’s bottle top collection
Exclusive?
Chapter Eight: Barbara, To the Rescue!
Mercy Gardens calls
Grandpa
Tom’s dream
Slow and steady
Barbara to the rescue
Two secrets
Tom
Whose letter?
The Treasure Chest of Mystery
Cleo’s letter #2
Chapter Nine: Tom Falls In Love ... with a Dictionary!
Cleo plan # 3
My love affair with the dictionary
Dinner with Dad
Rejoice (meaning “to celebrate, have fun, etc”)
Thomas extends his vocabulary
Cleo
Tom
Double gobbledegook?
A virus
After three days, a breakthrough?
Breakfast
Chapter Ten: Quivering Lips, Trembling Hands, Beating Hearts and Other Stuff
Grandpa and the bottle tops from China
Quivering lips, trembling hands, beating hearts and other stuff
Thursday afternoon
Cleo, and ladders
The parcel and the possiblilities
Dead parent wish #9, or not?
Cheating
Uncle Robert and Aunt Ruth at morning tea
Like riding a bike
Murchison Creek
Bulls, Hamburgers, and Dads
The reason there are so many dead parents in books
Almost caught
Two words for a moron
Chapter Eleven: Cleo’s Last and Absolutely Final Plan
Tree
Skimming stones
What is Dad saying?
Cleo’s last and absolutely final plan
Perfect
Uncle Robert’s surprise
Strangely normal
Chapter Twelve: The Time of His Life
Saturday
The time of his life
Lunch, and music
The music
Copyright
TOM JONES SAVES THE WORLD
Steven Herrick is one of Australia’s most popular poets. He has published ten books of poetry for adults, young adults, and children.
His three verse-novels for young adults— Love, ghosts and nose hair; A place like this and the simple gift were all shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year Awards and the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards.
Steven’s verse novel for younger readers, The Spangled Drongo, won the Patricia Wrightson Prize at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.
Over the past ten years he has performed his poems throughout Australia in schools, pubs, universities, festivals, rock venues and on radio and television. He has also toured Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and Singapore. He is one of Australia’s most travelled and widely heard poets. Steven lives in the Blue Mountains with his partner and two sons.
Also by Steven Herrick
Young Adult Fiction series
Water Bombs
Love, ghosts and nose hair
A place like this
The Simple Gift
Storybridge series
My Life, My Love, My Lasagne
Poetry to the Rescue
Love Poems & Leg Spinners
The Spangled Drongo
Jam Roll series
The Place Where the Planes Take Off
PRAISE FOR TOM JONES SAVES THE WORLD
As one of Australia’s favourite poets, he crafts his work brilliantly, and the underlying message will benefit all ages.
Lyndon Riggall
The Examiner
Steven Herrick’s unconventional storytelling works well, injecting an immediacy and intimacy that illustrates the importance of family ties and the love of true friends.
Russ Merrin
Magpies
After a succession of heroes battling with difficulties after the loss of parents here Herrick turns the tables and creates an ‘over-parented’ hero who longs to be an orphan like the boys in the books he reads! ... A jaunty, funny and sentimental verse novel.
The Source
Chapter One
TOM JONES AND THE BOTTLE TOP COLLECTION
Dead parents
Sometimes
I wish I was like
those kids I read about
in books.
The kids who live with
weird Aunts because their parents
died in a car accident
or
of some heartbreaking disease.
The kids who lead exciting lives
without parents to moan about
unfinished homework
unmade beds
uncombed hair.
When these kids
don’t do homework
or don’t make their beds
every
one thinks
“oh, that’s all right,
they’re still recovering from the loss.”
Even when the accident
happened ten years ago,
the kid is allowed
to be a slob.
Don’t get me wrong.
I don’t want
Mum and Dad to die.
Maybe if they went
to live in another country
for twenty years
and left me alone?
That would be enough.
Thomas
My name is
Thomas Wilbur Johannas Harold Jones.
But, please, call me Tom.
Everyone else does,
except Dad
who calls me Thomas
because he says Tom
is what you call a stray cat,
and Mum
who calls me Darling,
or Sweetie,
or if I do something wrong, Honey.
(Now you know what I mean
about dead parents.)
I live in a big brick home
in a new suburb
called Pacific Palms.
Between us and the Ocean
are five suburbs—
Pacific Meadows
Pacific Green
Pacific Heights
Pacific Crescent
and, of course,
Pacific Beach.
Because of our name
every house has a palm tree
planted smack-bang
in the middle of the frontyard.
There are no other trees.
Everyone has planted
shrubs instead.
That’s all Mum
and Mrs Johnson next door
talk about.
“Your camellias are looking lovely, dear.”
“Why thank you, Mrs Johnson.
And so are yours.”
Dead Parent Wish # 1
The house
The Real Estate Agent
said it was an
“architect-designed
five-bedroom, two-bathroom
slice of heaven set
among immaculate gardens
in the prestigious gated-community
of Pacific Palms”.
Well, the architect
must have been very popular
because I’ve already counted
fifty-two houses
exactly the same as ours.
Yes, it does have five bedrooms–
one for Mum and Dad,
one for me,
and three for Dad’s
bottle top collection.
(Dead Parent Wish # 2).
The bathrooms each have a spa.
And the “immaculate gardens”
are one palm tree
and forty-eight varieties of Camellia.
All of this is surrounded by
a wrought-iron fence
on which Dad has hung
a sign that reads
NO Hawkers Allowed
NO Junk Mail
BEWARE! Dog on Premises
That last line is a lie.
Dad said if the first two lines
didn’t work
the last one would.
A gated community
To get into our suburb
you drive
down Cherrywood Avenue
and at the end of the street
is a sandstone wall
and a massive iron gate.
To get through this gate
you reach out of
the car window and punch your
Personal Entry Number (PEN)
into the keypad on the pole.
The gate slides open,
you drive through,
and it closes behind you.
Often there is a Security Guard
in the office beside the entrance.
He sits at his desk
reading the paper
waiting for something to happen.
After two months
of living here
I realised it was
like a prison that
parents paid lots of money
to live in so
they could say things like
“I feel so secure now.
Thomas can walk the streets
and I know he’s safe.”
In our old town,
I used to walk to the shops
to the river
to the school.
I knew everyone.
At Pacific Palms, I only know
Mrs Johnson
who keeps trying to show me
her garden.
I live in a Camellia Prison.
Arnold
My Dad is Arnold Jones
from Beacham Beacham Beacham and Zibrowski,
Accountants.
Arnold the Accountant.
Each morning
Dad drives his clean white Commodore
down Cherrywood Avenue
to his office at Pacific Beach for a day spent
adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.
He returns at exactly 5:30pm,
parks the car in our double garage,
removes his shoes at the back door,
and says
“I’m home, dear”,
places his briefcase in his office—
Bottle top Collection Room # 2—
kisses Mum,
sees me in the kitchen doing homework
and says,
“How was your school experience today, Thomas?”
(Yes, Dead Parent Wish # 3).
I answer “Okay, Dad”.
Arnold the Accountant
then goes upstairs to
change into
white shorts, white polo shirt,
white bowling hat,
white long socks,
and white running shoes.
Arnold the Albino Accountant
then walks downstairs
and out the front door with Mum,
also dressed all in white,
for their “Afternoon reflection walk”
as Dad calls it.
Sometimes, they ask me
if I’d like to go with them.
I lie about too much homework,
watch them walk, wiggling bottoms,
down the street,
then I run upstairs
and change into my swimmers
and jump into the spa,
sit back,
and read novels
about children with dead parents.
Some people have all the luck!
Our old town
Dad’s always been like that.
Original?
Unique?
Unusual?
Mad!
In our old town,
not far from here,
he had more time
to spend with me.
We’d play cricket in the backyard,
and he’d bowl these wild
spinners that seemed to
turn at right-angles.
“Here’s my astronaut ball, Thomas,” he’d say.
Then he’d bowl one
really high
so high it took forever to land.
I’d smash it over
the neighbour’s fence.
Mum would say,
“Another astronaut in space, dear?”
Then Dad got this new job
and we moved here.
Now he’s always working.
Our old town is so close
yet
it’s a million kilometres away.
Barbara
My Mum is Barbara.
She used to be an Accountant as well,
but she “retired”
to have a baby (that’s me!).
Dad calls her
The Minister for Home Affairs.
And she does
spend a lot of time at home.
She loves cleaning, and cooking,
and gardening.
I try to tell her about
Feminism
and Equality of the Sexes,
but she just says
“Tom, darling,
why would I want to
be anywhere but here,
with you and Arnold.”
(Dead Parent Wish # 4?)
Shock! Horror! Belly!
Now,
that’s the Barbara
that Dad knows.
And it’s the Barbara
that Mum wants the world to see,
but
I know a different Barbara.
One day, two weeks ago,
I came home early from school.
As I’m unlocking the back door
I hear this really loud music—
bongos, drums, and strange wailing sounds,
coming from upstairs.
All the curtains are drawn.
I quietly close the door
and follow the sound.
I’m a little scared.
It could be a burglar
with mad musical tastes
robbing our house!
But no,
It’s Mum,
dressed in some weird
Middle Eastern costume
with balloon trousers,
spangled top,
and bare
totally naked!!! stomach
belly dancing
in front of the bedroom mirror.
Luckily,
she’s so involved in her dance
she doesn’t see me
so I duck into the hall closet
leaving the door open
just enough to watch
Barbara
Barbara
Barbara the Belly dancer!
glide, shimmy, shake,
and gyrate through an hour
of dance.
Mum’s pretty good too
and here in the dark of the closet,
I realise,
that to be this good
Mum must have been
dancing and practising for ages.
Me and Dad
never knew.
Dad would have a heart attack.
Maybe I should tell him!
(Dead Parent Wish # 5)
School
Now get this.
Our suburb is so new