Johnny Swanson

Johnny Swanson, a mystery for 9 year olds set in 1929, opens with the smallest boy in the class failing at the high jump in front of everybody.

What happens

Johnny is eleven. He is tiny. His PE teacher calls him Squirt and tells him the country needs men, not insects like him. His classmates call him Quacky. His dad died in the war and everyone keeps telling Johnny what a fine strong man he was.

So when he finds a torn-out newspaper advert promising The Secret of Instant Height for two shillings and sixpence, he wants it more than anything.

He has no money. His mum has a china mug on a high shelf with the Christmas savings in it.

You can see exactly where this is going, and Updale makes you watch every single step of it. Johnny creeps down in the cold, drops a penny, freezes. Tells himself it is borrowing and not stealing. Invents an Auntie Ada to explain the postal order and then has to keep her alive for the rest of the book.

The answer arrives. It says, in full, "Stand on a box."

And that is the hinge of the whole thing. Johnny is furious for one long night. Then he works out that if he was daft enough to fall for it, plenty of other people will be too. His first idea is an advert promising to stop your baby wetting the bed, one shilling, and the answer will be to make him sleep in a chair.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

There is a tuberculosis scare at the school and the playground talk is all coughing up blood and wasting away. A new friend's baby sister is seriously ill. Money is short and the rent is going up. And after the letter arrives, Johnny is so ashamed that he wets himself, which is written kindly but is there on the page.

None of that is misery for its own sake. It is why a boy would steal from his own mother over a lie about being taller.

Your reader does not need to know anything about 1929 to follow it. The paper round, the sweets, the teacher who picks on you, all of that travels.

What to read next

If they take to a child who solves something the grown-ups will not listen to, The Ministry of Unladylike Activity has May Wong stuck in England when war breaks out and deciding the fastest way home is to become a spy.