Although written for entertainment about a boy becoming ten - a milestone birthday, the story also deals with the issue of bullying, keeping secrets and not being able to talk to adults. These are common concerns for children of this age. Parents can use this book as an icebreaker to stimulate discussion on subjects many children find hard to talk openly about. Billy is entering young adulthood. He has to make sense of his environment. Like all children, he is confronted with a complex, diverse, fast changing, exciting world full of opportunities, contradictions and dangers through which he must navigate on his way to becoming a responsible adult. This is a confusing time with a plethora of conflicting information coming from a variety of sources including family, friends, peers, teachers, television and the internet. What underlies Billy's journey, as with all children, is the values he will adopt. Values provide us with the basis on which we assess the usefulness of what we are told, and how to react to situations we experience; in short, how to forge a path through life. Young children have leanings mostly gained from their parents; becoming a young adult is the time they form values for themselves. The Life Lessons Series are written to have children form positive values which will serve them at this stage in their life. Each book uses the power of traditional storytelling to illustrate, guide and shape their understanding in a safe environment. Bullying is a big problem for children today but it is also part of learning to stand up for oneself. In this story Billy, like any other child, is looking forward to a big birthday. However, the local bullies hear he's been given a twenty pound note and challenge him to hand it over. Billy realises he can't fight the gang so has had to agree to their demands. At first Billy doesn't dare tell a grownup as he feels guilty about losing it. Billy and his friend Ant try to hatch a plan to get it back. But it's not until Maxine, Ant's sister, hears about the problem that she realises an adult needs to be involved. Grandad who does party magic, is the ideal person to get it back. Max and Grandad hatch a plot. The bullies don't realise what is happening until it's too late. Grandad recovers the twenty pound note leaving the bullies bemused. Disarming a bully is the better way of dealing with them. You can't rid the world of bullies but you can do something about how you deal with them.
About the Author: I've been writing fiction for the last five years. Prior I wrote many books and articles but all of a technical nature. Having been in the IT industry since 1978 I turned my attention to fiction during the summer of 2009. Armed with a pad and pen I unleashed a stream of consciousness - some 40,000 words before drawing a breath. The writing experience with such unbridled passion was new to me; very different from technical authoring. The excitement of not knowing where it was going but having an evolving story with a host of characters spurred me on. The Hole Opportunity was the first product of my imagination, and the first in a trilogy on the Hole theme. This was followed by "The Unexpected Consequences of Iron Overload," a humours, romantic spoof thriller about the medical condition Haemochromatosis. The book is an awareness raiser for the condition. Next came "A Tunnel is Only a Hole on its Side," Book II of the Hole trilogy. This was followed by "Billy's Tenth Birthday" and "Billy and Ant Fall Out." These are two coming of age children's books written to help youngsters come to terms with bullying and pride respectively. Book III of the Billy series "Billy's Horrible to Ant" covers jealously and is due early 2015. A further five book are planned in this series. Born in UK in 1952 and now living in southern France, I draw on my local knowledge and English sense of humour to provide inspiration, settings and locations for my characters and plots.