Lenny’s Book of Everything

Karen Foxlee's Lenny's Book of Everything is a tender, beautifully told story for 11 year olds about a girl whose little brother just keeps on growing.

What happens

Lenny lives with her mum and her brother Davey in a small flat in Ohio, across the road from the Greyhound bus station. Their dad kept leaving for work far away, and one morning he left for good. Mum works shifts at a retirement home and worries about everything. She's had a "something's not right" feeling about Davey since the day he was born.

At five, Davey is already the size of a much older child. By the time he's nearly six, a doctor guesses he's eight. The local nursery school takes one look at him and says he's too big. Mrs Gaspar next door gives him bitter tea to slow his growing and prays for him three times a day.

Then Mum wins a set of encyclopaedias in a competition (she fibs quite a lot in her entry). A new issue arrives every week, one letter at a time. Lenny and Davey pore over every page, from albatrosses to the abominable snowman. Davey falls in love with the golden eagle and decides he'll have one called Timothy.

Lenny tells the story herself, and it's like sitting right beside her. She's sharp and funny and a little bit prickly. She teases Davey and loves him fiercely, both at once. She irons her handkerchiefs for a teacher she doesn't even like. She keeps a sticker her dad gave her and never sticks it anywhere.

It's full of small, precise details that make the family feel completely real. The frog noises at the dinner table. The ants on the playground. The pigeons outside the bedroom window that Davey has named Frank, Roger and Martin.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

There's a lot of worry in it, a dad who walks out and a mum who's struggling, and a real sense that something is wrong with Davey's health. For a child who finds family worries hard to read about, it may be too much. If you've got a thoughtful reader who likes a book that makes them feel things, though, this could be one they remember for a very long time.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, Karen Foxlee's Dragon Skin is another quietly gripping story about a girl carrying a lot at home. Pip finds a half-dead baby dragon at the creek and has to work out how to keep it alive.