Good. Life is pretty bleak for 15-year-old Joe Darling, who works at a Tyneside shipyard where he has to cope with a nasty bully. Then an unlikely friendship with an old rag-and-bone man, who bequeaths him his horse, leads Joe to the biggest challenge of his life - how to save the horse, the Gladiator, from being put down. 160pp. Lib, stamp.