Rufus Chumley

Rufus Chumley is a complicated person.

He’s twelve years old but looks like he’s sixteen. This is because he has a growing condition that means that he is much, much bigger than his age. At two-years-old he looked like a five-year-old. And when he was two, his parents and nannies expected him to know his colours and the alphabet.

When he was five they expected him to be able to read like a nine year old. And when he was nine, Rufus’ parents thought he was big enough to look after himself. His parents have never liked him. In fact they are the type of people who don’t like children. Rufus grew up feeling that he wasn’t good enough. At school, when he was five he was much bigger than other five-year-old children in his class and their parents complained. Poor Rufus was put into a class with nine year olds. He has never had any real friends. And he has always felt very, very lonely.

One day when he was six he found a white albino squirrel on the ground at the edge of the playground. He picked it up to take it to the teacher. On the way over other children crowded around him to see what he had in his hands. The squirrel died in his hands. The other children thought he had killed it, and they thought this was cool. Suddenly Rufus got attention from the other kids and felt special. From that day on he felt that killing things would be his way to making friends. He wasn’t good at killing things. He was a bad shot with his catapult, and then a bad shot with the airgun that his parents got him. He lied to his classmates about what he had killed and it made him more popular. – Until the day he had some kids over for a barbecue in the woods, where he cooked some wild mushrooms for them and by mistake made them very sick. After that no one wanted to talk to him much.

He is complicated because he has so many problems, the biggest being that his parents never loved him. He has never felt that he belongs anywhere. In the book you will see how he learns about himself and finds a way to be in the world. I’m not going to tell you now what happens to him. This is just to say that now I know his full story, I see that he was a very brave person all along and I feel very sorry for him for not having kind parents.

Albi