The Bubble Wrap Boy

Phil Earle's The Bubble Wrap Boy is a funny, big-hearted story for 11 year olds about the smallest kid in school and a mum who won't let him out of her sight.

What happens

Charlie Han is fourteen and tiny. Everyone at school knows him as the boy whose family runs the Chinese takeaway, the clumsy one who falls over everything.

The school play is a disaster. All he has to do is drag a "dead" Mercutio offstage. Instead he brings the whole balcony down, and Romeo lands in the mayor's lap.

Things at home aren't any easier. His mum worries about EVERYTHING. There's still a baby gate at the top of the stairs. He had to wear swimming goggles to hang a bauble on the Christmas tree. And his delivery bike is a 1970s trike covered in more lights than an airport runway (he calls it the steel rhino).

Then one evening he sees a boy skateboarding, and follows him to a ramp in the old kiddie pool. The skaters fall off all the time, and nobody laughs. They just help each other up.

Charlie believes everyone's good at something. He just has to find his thing. Could this be it? And how on earth will he get a skateboard past his mum?

Charlie tells the story himself, and he's very, very funny about his own disasters. His best mate Sinus (enormous nose, strange thing about walls) is just as odd and just as loyal. You'll be laughing one minute and aching for him the next.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The bullying is rough. There's a "walk of shame" where kids line up to kick him, and he's called racist names. There's some swearing and crude humour too, including jokes about fancying girls. The book is completely on Charlie's side, though, and a reader who's ever felt left out may find a real friend in him.

What to read next

Phil Earle fans could try When the Sky Falls next. It has another boy who doesn't want to be where he's been sent, handed over to a gruff woman who seems to know more about him than he does.