Micky is a born liar. Mostly he lies to get himself out of messes - like not having done his homework or not wanting to take a bath. After a particularly bad lot of lying, he is sent to stay with his grandmother, an unusual lady who has the ability to make his lies come true. There really is a caterpillar in the cabbage he doesn't want to eat, and a frog in his soup. But when he misses the real whale that grandmother conjures up out of his lie, and when he realises his best friend thinks he is a liar too, he learns to write down his tall tales and make them legitimate stories. In a twist at the end, a sort of boy-crying-wolf twist, he actually finds a giraffe at the bottom of the garden and no one will believe him! Riddell's wonderfully comic illustrations add greatly to a funny, easily read moral tale.