It's Worse Now

When Theo was eight, an adult told him a lot of children grow out of tics. He held on to that sentence for three years.

Three years after Theo Does Not Choose It. Theo is eleven and it did not happen. It got worse — and the thing nobody told him, the thing he found out on the internet at half past eleven at night, is that this is completely normal. Tics peak at exactly the age when the most important thing in the world is being the same as everyone else. So he holds them, six hours a day, and lets go at home. Then in January somebody films him. And in March he asks if he can stand at the front and tell the class himself.

This is book 6 of six. The 5B Books pick up the six children from the 2B picture books three years on — same class, same six, eleven now. Each book is told in one child's own voice.

What is in the book

• Eight short chapters, written for readers aged 10–12
• Told in the first person — a child explaining himself, not an adult explaining a child
• A page for the grown-up on suppression, why being filmed is categorically different from being mocked, and why a child explaining his own condition works better than an adult doing it
• Three questions to talk about afterwards

How it works

Works on its own, and works better if you know the picture book. Tourette syndrome is named on the last page, for the adult — the story itself just tells you what hiding it costs, and what changed when the other twenty-six stopped looking.

Instant download. EPUB for e-readers and tablets, PDF for everything else. Both files included.