Doubting Thomas

Doubting Thomas by Morris Gleitzman is a very funny story for 9 year olds about a boy whose nipples itch whenever somebody tells a lie.

What happens

Thomas Gulliver is eleven and he is sitting in a doctor's waiting room with a bandage on his arm. The red stain seeping through it is raspberry jam. He faked the injury because he could not face saying out loud what is actually wrong with him.

His big sister Alisha is there too, texting. She works it out in about four seconds and licks the jam off his bandage.

The real problem is that his nipples keep itching. A hundred and fifty seven times in two weeks. He made the mistake of mentioning it to the boys on the soccer team, so now the whole school thinks he is turning into a girl.

Dr Ling is baffled. He shines a tiny medical torch at Thomas's chest, pronounces the areolae healthy and settles on stress. Have a think about what is going on each time it happens, he says.

So Thomas does, standing in the surgery doorway.

Dr Ling has just said he only owns one of those torches. The second one is on the shelf behind his head. Alisha said she could not get reception. Thomas told a stranger that jam is good for stab wounds.

Oh.

The pleasure of reading it is Thomas taking everything absolutely seriously. He checks whether he is growing bosoms. He decides not to tell the doctor exactly how many hours and minutes it has been, in case the doctor gets stressed and has an affair like on ER. He is unfailingly polite while panicking completely.

Then there is Alisha, who is vile to him and lovely to him, sometimes in the same breath. If you have got an eleven year old and a teenager in one house, you will recognise that entirely.

The comedy does sit squarely on the word nipple. Also boobs, willies and rude dreams, all in the first chapter, most of it coming out of Alisha's mouth at top volume in a waiting room full of strangers. None of it is unkind and none of it is actual puberty information. But the giggle rate is very high, so a child who finds that sort of thing mortifying rather than hilarious may not get far.

It is Australian, by the way. The school oval, Cheezels, Nan's birthday dinner.

What to read next

If Thomas is a hit, Give Peas a Chance is a stack of short stories by the same author, where somebody is always stuck in a hole of their own digging and there is usually a chainsaw or a plate of vegetables involved.