There's no easy way to put this, so I'll say it straight out. It's time I faced up to the truth. I'm fourteen years old and I have Ishmael Leseur's Syndrome. There is no cure. And there is no instant cure to being a bookish kid with weird parents and a pathological fear of school bully Barry Bagsley - especially if your parents have named you after a character in their favourite book, Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. That is, until James Scobie comes along. Scobie, the 'spazoid alien freak', happens to be completely without fear. A richly comic novel about being at school and learning to live with being fourteen. Michael Gerard Bauer's son Joseph provided the artwork for the cover.