And – shucks – that's good enough for me. It's original and quirky, with real heart.

Whether children, growing up in a world of US cartoons and games, will find certain American aspects of this book easier to understand than this ancient reviewer is hard to guess, but ultimately, Timmy Failure is a fabulously fun read and the line drawings are a treat. Then there's Molly Moskins, the classmate with the goo-goo eyes who obviously has a thing for Timmy. His name isn't short for Florence, but for 'Misshelve my books and the blood may FLOw', and he reads such dangerous-sounding books as To Kill a Mockingbird and The Complete Works of Emily Dickinson. Other characters include Flo, the librarian who wears a first world war German spiked helmet. Truth be told, he probably doesn't even register on her radar. We don't really know what she looks like because Timmy usually censors her image with a huge black square.

In his case, it's rival schoolkid detective Corrina Corrina. Like all detectives, Timmy has an arch-nemesis. There are many laugh-out-loud moments, and Pastis's drawings are wonderful: characterful, endearing and downright silly. Timmy is a dreadful detective, and Pastis has great fun making it patently obvious to the reader who it was who stole the candy or why a girl is hiding a shoe behind her back, while Timmy comes up with the most ridiculous and wonderfully misguided theories to explain the crimes. But playground loner Timmy and his bear go everywhere together. Total doesn't talk, and he behaves pretty much as a bear would, eating out of trash cans or munching on his favourite Rice Krispies Treats. However crazy the story is – and, boy, is this book crazy, in a good way – Timmy's world is a 'real' world of school, his single mum going on dates, and so on, with the exception of said bear.

Mistakes Were Made by Stephan Pastis