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The Boy Who Fooled the World
by Lisa Thompson
Cole's painting is bought for a fortune and he becomes famous overnight, which is wonderful until people start asking who really painted it.
A story about children and families, thoughtful and wry in tone. We would put it with children of 9–12, and at a reading age of about 10 for reading alone.
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Our take on this book
Cole comes from a family with no money and thinks little of his own art, until a painting of his is bought for a small fortune and he becomes an overnight sensation, courted by a gallery and a slick older mentor — which is wonderful right up until the moment people start asking who really painted it. Lisa Thompson builds a genuinely tense moral story out of a lie that grows too big to control, and Cole is a sympathetic narrator whose reasons for keeping quiet — a struggling family, a sick friend, the sudden intoxication of being someone — make his predicament painfully understandable. It is thoughtful and a little wry rather than frightening, with no real peril, and the pressure comes entirely from the reader knowing the truth must come out. For a nine- to twelve-year-old it is an absorbing, discussable read about honesty, worth and the seductions of fame, from a reliably excellent writer.
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Front DeskKelly Yang
Goggle-EyesAnne Fine
Or let them write their own.
Nothing gets a child reading like a story they invented themselves. Your child plans the characters and the plot, and we write, illustrate and print it as a real book with their name on the cover as the author.
Find another book
Tell us the age, the reading age and what they like, and we will suggest a handful.