The Boy Who Could Fly

This is a nicely satisfying wish-fulfilment story. One day Thomas Top is an ordinary, not particularly popular boy, the next he's the boy everyone wants to know. Transformation occurs when he is given the ability to fly by a Fat Fairy, who arrives out of the blue to grant him a birthday wish. Thomas's real problem however is his father's obsession that their family be ordinary and Thomas's first and real wish was for his father to be fun. Fortunately, the Fat Fairy can lend a hand here too, once his father acknowledges the problem. Thomas's new talent and the various characters' responses to it are described very matter-of-factly; yet this and the prosaic tone of the storytelling highlights the fantasy. The book makes the point that adults are people too and that some people just can't be ordinary. While Fat Fairies are probably more common now than of yore, this one has a nice line in belching!