FAT BOY SWIM
by Catherine Forde
Age 11+
Fourteen-year-old Jim, aka boobsy, Fat Boy Fat and Smelly Kelly, takes a lot of flak at school for being plump, especially from his football referee, who tells him he is useless.

Jim has a secret talent, though, for cookery, and sometimes in his dreams he is a swimmer. One day he gets swimming lessons in exchange for a cooking commission and in a credibility-stretching five weeks his life is transformed. The boy he becomes cannot be hurt any more, not even by the ref.

This first novel came unsolicited to its publisher and, although its theme of the bullied boy who gets his own back is a familiar formula, Jim is unusually engaging and you root for him as he makes an unexpected discovery about his parentage, finds requited love and triumphs over the bad guys. It is convincingly characterised, with a sense that everyone deserves chances and that we can all make our own destinies.

This book decries the kind of feeble teenage ambition that practises no skills but hopes to be snatched into celebrity. Instead, effort and talent and decentness are rewarded, and character is more important than appearances. Its heart, in other words, is in the right place (Egmont £4.99).

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