When the annual school science fair comes round, Mr Cartright’s class don’t get to work on the Soap Factory, the Maggot Farm, or the Exploding Custard Tins.

To their intense disgust they get the Flour Babies - sweet little six-pound bags of flour that must be cared for at all times. Young Simon Martin, a committed hooligan, approaches the task with little enthusiasm. But, as the days pass, he not only grows fond of his flour baby, he also comes to learn more than he ever could have imagined about the pressures and strains of being a parent.

Flour Babies won the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year