The Boy Who Could Do What He Liked

David Baddiel's The Boy Who Could Do What He Liked is a funny story for 9 year olds about a boy whose entire life runs to a timetable.

What happens

Alfie is eleven. He has a waking-up routine, a getting-dressed routine, a clearing-up-after-tea routine and about a dozen more. His dad wrote them all out and pinned them to the walls of the house.

Alfie doesn't need to look at them. He knows them by heart. He also wears two watches, one on each wrist, so he always knows exactly how late he isn't.

And he's happy! That's the bit that surprised me. This isn't a boy longing to break free. The routines make his life work very, very well.

Then the babysitter has to fly home to Lithuania at no notice (there's an incident involving her mother and a pig) and his parents have a dinner party they can't get out of. The only name they can find is on an old card at the back of a drawer.

Mrs Stokes turns out to be VERY old. Zimmer frame, two hearing aids, and no interest whatsoever in a timetable. First she thinks Alfie has a bean in his shoe. Then she thinks he has a poo-team.

And when he finally asks for his tea, she says the thing the whole book hangs on. Just do what you like.

Which sounds brilliant. Except his tea is in a hot oven he isn't allowed to open, and he doesn't know how to switch the dishwasher on, and there's a science essay waiting that he needs a grown-up for. Freedom turns out to be quite a lot of admin.

It's silly in the best way. Hearing aid feedback that sounds like somebody's old records. A whole family shouting at each other in capital letters. Alfie doing the maths on how fourteen minutes late for tea makes everything else fourteen minutes late too.

One thing to know before you start. Alfie's mum died when he was little and the routines began not long afterwards. It isn't something that happens in the story, it's the reason things are the way they are, and it sits quietly under all the jokes. His dad still stops in the hallway to look at a painting she made of the sea. If your reader has lost someone, that may land harder than the cover suggests.

What to read next

If the family-turned-upside-down part is what they enjoy, The Parent Agency is in the library too. Barry Bennett is nearly ten and keeps a written list of everything he blames his parents for, starting with his name.