Flying Fergus 1 – The Best Birthday Bike

Sir Chris Hoy and Joanna Nadin's The Best Birthday Bike is the first Flying Fergus book, a cycling adventure with a magic twist for 8 year olds about a boy who dreams much bigger than his bike.

What happens

Fergus Hamilton lives in the flat above his grandpa's junk shop. There's Mum, Grandpa Herc and Chimp, a scruffy dog who eats socks (and shoes, and chalk, and the odd plastic soldier).

What Fergus wants most in the world is a Sullivan Swift. It's the bike his hero Spokes Sullivan dreamed up, with twenty-four gears. On a Swift he might get into Wallace's Winners, the best cycling team in the city. The catch is that their star rider is Wesley Wallace, who calls Fergus a loser every chance he gets.

Mum's already working every shift the hospital will give her, so a Swift is out of the question. On his birthday Fergus unwraps a rusty brown bike with barely eight gears. It used to be his dad's, and his dad disappeared before Fergus was born. Fergus's "thanks" doesn't come out very well.

Then his best friend Daisy turns up and won't hear a word against it. After a scrub, new pedals and bright orange paint, it's ready to ride. Grandpa gives Fergus one warning. Don't ever let the pedals spin backwards. Can you guess what happens?

Fergus ends up flying, and he lands in Nevermore. There's a princess in a tiara and mismatched wellies, a king who has banned cycling and a Swamp of Certain Death to ride through (only nine out of ten people die, apparently). Oh, and Chimp can talk now. In an Australian accent.

Nevermore is the place from Grandpa's old bedtime stories about Fergus's dad. So Fergus starts to wonder whether those stories were true after all.

It's very funny to read. Chimp has a cheeky answer for everything and Daisy is brilliant at putting Wesley in his place. The Scottish voices are lovely to read aloud too, with plenty of "och" and "wee" and Daisy's favourite word, "Beast!"

There's a proper heart to it as well. Grandpa tells Fergus there's no such thing as magic, just hard graft, and Fergus practises every day after school. If you've got a reader who has ever been let down by a present and then grown to love it, they'll probably recognise that feeling.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, they might also like The Boy Who Biked the World. Tom is another daydreamer, always off somewhere else in his head during maths, until he announces that he's going to cycle all the way round the planet.