If you’re a kid with sneezes and runny eyes, Aaron’s Awful Allergies could be your Bible. Aaron is an exceptional little boy not only because of his medical condition but because of his inordinately sweet disposition and passionate love of everything that squeaks, hops, and scratches. There’s no sign of a Gameboy or a video screen in this kid’s life: he’s in tune with the natural, not the virtual world, and that’s his tragedy – the natural world is out of tune with him, his chemistry to be precise. All the guinea pigs, and the cat and six kittens under the bed, and the big brown dog with his head on Aaron’s pillow have to go.

“At least I can still listen to the wild animals,” poor Aaron consoles himself. But he wants his own pet, his own familiar, and his choice of a goldfish is inspired. He takes Flash in his glass bowl around the block, up into his treehouse, to the movies, and even into the lake. It’s a neat parable, offered lightly: if Flash can be integrated into Aaron’s air-breathing world, Aaron too can find ways of co-existing with an environment hostile to his physiology. After Aaron absorbs this lesson, he feels “much better,” and realizes that there are also plenty of other creatures out there for him to love. Didactic to be sure, but it’s a well-earned happy ending: another extraordinary thing about Aaron is that he looks after his animals faithfully and cleans the guinea pig cage, apparently unprompted, twice a week!

There’s a pleasing symbiosis between Troon Harrison’s lucid text and Eugenie Fernandes’s full-colour illustrations. These are full of delightful detail, generally realistic with a brief detour into a fantasy of dancing orangutans and leopards. Adults are smiley folk who break bad news as sympathetically as possible, and Aaron’s patient little face is hard to resist.