Rating: ***** 5 stars

Paul Jennings,
How Hedley Hopkins Did a Dare.
Puffin, 2005.

Closely autobiographical, this excellent story is set in 1956 and features Hedley Hopkins, alias the author himself, as a lonely recent immigrant to Australia.  On the cusp of adolescence, he also has to cope with unfriendly pupils at his school and unimaginative, hypercritical parents at home.  His only true friend is his sister Kate.

Put in charge of a very backward boy sent to his school as an experiment, his cup of misery now seems full.  What follows is an exciting, often funny but also moving story involving a skull, first experience of developing sexuality, a brutal teacher and a clever climax where somehow everything quite convincingly works out well.

Billed as Jennings' first book for teenage readers, it deserves both younger and older readers as well.

Paul Jennings
November 2005, No. 155