The Super-Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates

Jenny Pearson's The Super-Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates is a funny, tender road trip for 10 year olds about a boy who sets off to find the father he's never met.

What happens

Freddie loves facts. (A garden snail has over 14,000 teeth, in case you wondered.) He lives with Dad and Grams, and his summer holidays look set to be very boring.

Then Grams dies. Freddie tells you so at the very start, so you're ready for the sad part, and it happens in the second chapter. In an envelope she left for him is his birth certificate, with a name on it. Alan Froggley.

Freddie has always known Dad isn't his biological father. Now he has a name, a birthplace in Wales and an old work website. So he hatches a plan with Ben and Charlie, his best mates. Ben has the money. Charlie has no filter at all. Each boy tells his parents he's sleeping over at one of the others' houses, and off they go to Cardiff on the train.

It's properly laugh-out-loud. Charlie orders his burger in a Welsh accent that drifts into Irish. Freddie ends up clinging to a security guard's legs, begging. And there's a very unfortunate mix-up with Grams's hanky (it isn't a hanky).

But it's the sad bits that make it special. Freddie reaches for a fact whenever he's close to tears, and you can see exactly what he's doing even when he can't. Dad is lovely, hopeless and grieving too, with his leg in plaster after running himself over with his own post van.

A heads-up about the grief. Grams's death and the days after it are written with real feeling. Freddie's mum died just after he was born (that's backstory, not a later twist), and Dad smokes and swears in the first shock of it. For a child who's recently lost someone, that could be tender territory. For many others it's a warm, hopeful way into big feelings.

What to read next

If they fall for Freddie, try A Boy Called Hope next. Dan's dad walked out four years ago and has just popped up on the telly, and Dan badly wants him back.