Can't Touch This: The Legend of ...The Worst Boy in the World by Eoin Colfer

The Woodman boys are a quartet of whiners, but they don't get much sympathy from their busy parents, particularly their father, who calls perennial complaints like the youngest's constant refrain of "Snoffair!" their "hobby horses." (As in, "Are you still riding that hobby horse?") Nine-year-old middle kid Will can never get to first base with his complaints with his two younger brothers monopolizing the parental ears.

So Will decides that Granddad's are the ears of choice for him. Granddad is a lighthouse keeper, and as his "Bosun buddy," Will's visits to help polish the big light's lens give him a stellar opportunity to vent his sob stories. Unfortunately, Granddad is 70 years old, and Will's tales of woe, such as having to beg loudly for his teacher to fetch some toilet paper to the boys' john, can't top Granddad's wild tales of tinfoil toilet paper and shark bites on the head. Bummer! No respect here either!

But then Will approaches Dad for advice on how to get sympathy from Granddad.

"I can't remember one terrible thing that's ever happened to me. Not one."

Dad scratched the stubble on his chin. "Well, there was one thing. You were only two at the time, so you probably don't remember it."
My eyes opened wide. "Was it terrible?"

"Oh, yes."

"And dangerous?"

"Absolutely."

"Tell me Dad. And don't leave out any details. I need the whole terrible dangerous truth."

So Dad begins to reminisce about a truly mean and genuinely toe-curling trick that big brother Marty pulled on little Will when he was a gullible toddler. It seems that little Will was fascinated with walking on straight lines. Marty was just old enough to know where there was at least a mile of an unblemished white line--one that will take little Will far from home--right down the middle of the almost completed highway nearby. At last Will feels he has a story of such treachery and near tragedy that it will bring tears of compassion even to Granddad's eyes and finally gain him the sympathy he deserves.

"Well, that's a good one, Bosun. Yours is a sad and troubled past."

"Being bitten on the head by a shark is pretty good, too, Granddad," I said generously.

Granddad ruffled my hair with his free hand. "I thought so, too, until I heard your story."

But even after this admission, Granddad has to tell another story, about his predecessor at the lighthouse, one Peg Leg Pete, who built the 116 spiraling steps up to the light with one huge step at the bottom. Granddad says there's an important moral to that story, and if Will can figure it out, he'll understand why Granddad's problems always topped his.

I thought about that for a while. What was the moral of Peg Leg's spiral staircase? Granddad had said that the big step made all the others seem small. What did that have to do with our Saturday sessions? All we did was talk abut our problems, and Granddad's had always been bigger than mine. Until today.

And, of course, Will does figure out the moral, and now he knows he has someone on his side, someone who takes his problems seriously, but cares enough to help him not take them too seriously.

Eoin Colfer's Legend of the Worst Boy in the World (Eoin Colfer's Legend of) is a seriously funny story of the ups and downs of normal life which will keep beginning chapter readers laughing all the way through. At Accelerated Reader level 4.4, richly illustrated with Glenn McCoy's comic drawings, there will be no reluctant readers once this one is opened.