Dominic’s Discovery

Gervase Phinn's Dominic's Discovery is a school-trip comedy for 9 year olds about a boy who attracts disaster without ever meaning to.

What happens

Dominic Dowson is standing in the headteacher's office again. It is Friday. He has been in there every day this week.

Monday was a window that just sort of fell out. Tuesday was the school hamster, which ended up in the salad bowl. Wednesday was a fire extinguisher and a corridor turned into a skating rink.

Today he climbed a shelf to be helpful and brought the powder paints down on his teacher. Miss Pruitt is now several colours of the rainbow.

Mr Merriman calls him an enigma. Dominic thinks it might be a South American bird.

The trouble is next week. His class is off to Thundercliff Bay for five days in a youth hostel, and Dominic has been falling asleep every night thinking about pirates and smugglers and buried treasure. His gran dipped into her fund for emergencies to pay for it.

Now the headteacher is wondering out loud whether he should go at all.

What gives this its warmth is how much Dominic wants this week and how little money there is at home. His suitcase is his gran's old one. His rucksack came off his uncle. His gran hands him a pound for an ice cream and tells him about a gold sovereign her own grandmother was left in a will and had to spend on shoes.

Then he's off, with a strict teacher borrowed from the other school watching him like a hungry hawk, and his walking boots still standing behind the back door at home.

Phinn is very funny about teachers. Mr Merriman never uses one word where several will do, and Dominic counts his expressions during assembly (the record is eighteen). Mr Risley-Newsome turns up in full Antarctic kit with a compass, a whistle and a lecture about the difference between can and may. Your reader will work out exactly what sort of week this is going to be.

One gentle thing to know. Dominic's dad left when he was small, his mum won't talk about him, and Dominic still dreams that he'll come back rich and famous. It sits quietly under all the comedy and it never spoils the jokes.

What to read next

If your child likes a school trip where absolutely everything goes wrong, Ross Montgomery's Tripwrecked is in the library as well. A drama club sets off to perform The Tempest at a festival, the ferry goes down in a storm, and the survivors wash up somewhere they really were not expecting.