Simon can hear with the use of a hearing aid and if people are facing him, and he has done well at his school in Coventry, where friends call him 'Cool Simon'. When his family move to London, he must adjust to a new class and they must adjust to him and to his unusual speech. Sam is an aggressive, friendless girl, who wishes she was a boy, and she and Simon form a friendship of sorts. Always in trouble herself, she soon gets Simon in trouble too, and they ultimately become involved with a gang of yobs who steal Woodside School's pet rabbit, and who, finally, put both children in real danger. Sam never 'informs' - her dad has left home and she is a very unhappy child - but Simon champions her because he has become liked, and other begin to accept him. The school playground language is true-to-life and Simon's problems due to his deafness ring very true. He is natural and ordinary, and children with partial hearing should readily identify with him.