The Factory Made Boy

This brilliant novel won the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1984. It was originally published in 1976 in the UK as Conrad the Factory-Made Boy. This edition has the original, hilarious illustrations by Frantz Wittkamp but a new jacket illustration by David Roberts. The Factory Made Boy tells the story of the scatty, artistic and entirely improper Mrs Bartolotti, for whom one of many bad habits is an addiction to clipping coupons and purchasing mail-order goods. When one day a huge metal can weighing 20kg turns up at her door, Mrs Bartolotti just assumes it’s another misguided purchase she has long since forgotten. On opening the can, she finds a crumpled and factory-made boy. After applying a special solution, Conrad becomes fully-formed: the most perfect seven-year-old boy imaginable.

An excellent book for reading aloud, the comedy is matched by an underlying message as pertinent to parents as to children. For while Conrad is as polite, well-mannered and good as his adoptive mother is unruly and raucous, this matters not one jot to how well they love one another. Through Mrs Bartolotti, Nöstlinger asks important questions about the way society teaches both adults and children to behave. While our anarchic heroine may be a shade too honest for younger readers (crucially, on the veracity of Santa Claus), the book is immensely enjoyable for anyone who has ever been naughty and yet still adored.