The 10 pm question / De Goldi, Kate.

For secondary school age. For secondary school age. Abstract: Frankie Parsons is twelve going on old man: an apparently sensible, talented Year 8 with a drumbeat of worrying questions steadily gaining volume in his head: Are the smoke alarm batteries flat? Does the cat, and therefore the rest of the family, have worms? Most of the significant people in Frankie's world - his father, his brother and sister, his great-aunts, his best friend Gigs - seem gloriously untroubled by worry. Only Ma takes seriously his catalogue of persistent anxieties; only Ma listens patiently to his 10 p.m. queries. Then the new girl arrives at school and has questions of her own: relentless, unavoidable questions. So begins the unravelling of Frankie Parson's carefully controlled world.