I did not intend to do another "Revenge" book so soon. Although this book has no actual revenge but this re-write won't be fixing that. Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes is a pretty flat story with a weak protagonist and villains that aren't threatening or really that fun either. It does however have a kinda fun neighborhood feud subplot. So my first idea was to do something that...but I got another idea for a re-write. So you'll get a two for one sale, with two ideas for a re-write of this one. With that said, here we go:
IDEA 1:
Joe's Dad and Mr. McCall are in a seemingly neverending competition over just about everything. If one has something, the other needs to have a better version. Mr. McCall especially, as he pressures his son Moose to do better in school to show up Mindy, the smarter of Joe's Dad's kids. (He's got a name, just don't care). Basically the idea is that the kids already feel like they're caught in the middle of this competition between the dads but things get worse as they go on. Of course, they are gardening freaks so they are currently using their gardens to further one up each other.
Both gardens are really good, but McCall gets a tacky weird looking Gnome to top it off, which leads Joe's Dad to get one of his own from the same store. Things start to play out the same, as the gnomes come alive and do bad things that the fathers blame the other for, causing their rivalry to get even worse. Even Joe and Moose are banned from being friends with "the enemy" and this makes them really want to get to the bottom of the gnome mystery.
The gnomes reveal themselves and a smaller tweak is to actually give them powers so we have some reason to fear them. The episode has them burn people into gnomes, perhaps go with that and actually establish instead of randomly revealing it with the twist. You can have the same '"going to lawn lovely stuff to supposedly get trapped gnomes that are actually evil" stuff since it goes well with my next idea: When they get there, Joe's Dad and Mr. McCall show up. They snuck out to each see who has really been ruining their gardens and discover that it was the gnomes and weren't sure what to do, so they followed the kids to lawn lovely.
The gnomes get out their gnome friend and go full evil on them, and they get defeated via light cuz I think that works better than the dog whistle thing but it doesn't matter. The important part is that the dads help the kids do this, as get over their dumb arguing to do so. They don't exactly go full on buddy buddy so much as they realize they should put their differences aside for the sake of their kids and all that.
The gnomes get stopped and they go home, with things between the families getting better. As for a twist...you can put anything, as long as it doesn't totally ruin the development. Doesn't matter too much. As you can see, this idea explores the rivalry more, and has a basic moral about not fighting over dumb things and putting aside your differences since in this version, their fighting is the whole reason they got the gnomes to begin with, along with the other stuff.
So there's one idea to give this story a bit more to it while not making it too complicated for an evil gnome book. But here's another idea.
IDEA 2:
This one is less fleshed out but here it is. This one would be about Joe and the Gnomes. He's quite the prankster so let's play off that. He loves a good joke but doesn't have limits and can't draw the line between good fun and just being mean. When they get the gnomes, Joe doesn't mind their pranks because he finds them funny. The gnomes see this and reveal themselves early on and recruit him to help with their pranks. Once he's over the whole gnomes being alive, he cools down as the gnomes promise to not actually hurt one and they are just having fun.
But soon their pranks get much harsher and start to either hurt people, or hurt their feelings. I think you get the idea here, through this Joe learns that pranks and such can be fun sometimes but there's a limit and all that., I don't have a full mapped out story here, this is more of an idea to build on. This would require more changes to the structure but you can still have fun here. This has more gnome action so you can have more fun with their powers, maybe give the gnomes stronger personalities.
I feel this idea would be more fun but both work in giving this story more than just being a Slappy book with gnomes and gardening, ya know? Either way, tell me what you think as usual and throw out suggestions for future re-writes. Let's rewrite kids books together!
That will be all.