The Boy with Big Decisions by Helen Rutter
Big Book Award 2026 shortlisted title:
Fred’s parents make every decision, from which snacks to eat to which secondary school to go to. When they pick a high-pressure school for him, Fred begins to wonder whether he should start taking control of his own life.
On the first day of term, two buses arrive at the bus stop going to two very different schools. A wild, thrilling thought strikes Fred. Should he jump on the wrong bus, go to the other school, and see if he can get away with it?
After this point, many big decisions await Fred… and you, the reader, will move him through the story: helping him stand up for what he believes in, learn what he truly loves to spend time doing, make good and bad friends and choose to swerve or dive into drama.
Published by Scholastic
The Big Book Award 2026 Longlist Reading Panel of children from Longnor CofE Primary School said…
“It has multiple paths, so I really liked it.”
“I’d recommend it to everyone in my class because they can adapt it to their liking.”
“I got ending 5 and it was good, so I want to read it again.”
About the author
Helen lives in the countryside just outside Sheffield with her comedian husband, two children and two lovely dogs, Ronnie and Billy Whizz. When she is not tapping away in her writing room, she loves walking the dogs, playing board games and reading.
Before writing her first novel Helen wrote and performed her work on the stage. She has even done some stand up comedy and before that she was a jobbing actress. If you look hard you could even spot her in old episodes of Coronation Street, Holby City and many other TV staples including adverts, film and voice over. Her very first role was playing Ruby in Jacqueline Wilson’s Double Act, so maybe she was always destined to be involved with children’s books!
Helen’s book The Piano at the Station (published by Barrington Stoke) was shortlisted for Shropshire Bookfest’s Big Book Award 2024.
Visit Helen’s website to find out more about her and her books: https://www.helenrutter.com
Pupils taking part in Book Award 2026 are invited to post their comments and reviews below. (All comments will be moderated by Bookfest before they’re published.)
43 responses to “The Boy with Big Decisions by Helen Rutter”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Registered Charity Number: 1120177
Website made by THE CURIOUS
I liked this book but was very quick. Liked all the interesting decisions.
Overall, a good book.
⭐⭐⭐
I really liked Boy with Big Decisions; it was really good how the way you could chose the next move. 4 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐😁
I liked The Boy with Big Decisions but I preferred the other books.
3.5/5
A really good book for early readers and I liked how you could read it so many different times and it would be slightly changed or totally and completely changed.
I think this is the best decision making book I have read. I love the different schools. I think the individual stories were longer overall 7.5/10 and 4 stars
I enjoyed this book because you get to choose your own decisions and you get to go back and find out what the other one was!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Personally I thought that all the endings where very sad 🙁
I didn’t like this book 6/10
This book was a very easy read but still kept the feel of a true classic.
I like how you can choose which pathway to go down and how you can make a different story every time.
I really enjoyed The Boy With Big Decisions, my favourite thing about this book is that there’s such a variety of options to choose from and it’s amazing because they’re all very different. I’d 100 percent read it again. I rate this book a 10 out of 10.
Amazing book. It is great and I love being able to make the decisions myself. 5 star⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I really enjoyed this book. I found that you got to choose your own decisions which was really good. I would rate it a 10🌟
I like this book a lot because it is interactive and funny hehehe.
I like how you can choose the choices and make it so that they can be nice or bad and it has a good storyline.
I thought The Boy with Big Decisions was a book full of choice because you could do whatever you want. I would definitely recommend this book. Very good.⭐⭐⭐⭐
I really liked The Boy with Big Decisions. I think it is my favourite book so far. I would give it a 8/10
I thought The Boy with Big Decisions was a book full of choice because you could do whatever you want, I would definitely recommend this book. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
I really enjoyed The Boy with Big Decisions. I like how you got to pick what happened next in the story. 5⭐/5⭐
I really recommend The Boy with Big decisions. Personally, I am not a great reader, but Helen Rutter’s books are always a page turner 10/10. 👌👌👌
I really like the way Fred introduced himself at the start, but there were loads of decisions at the end, you needed to turn over lots of times. 8 /10
Great book love the decisions full of adventure and twist and turns. Love how you can decide what to do next. I have never experienced a book like this nice new turn
I loved the boy with big decisions because I love how you can choose what different type of adventure you can do. I also loved that there was map at the back of the book with all the other decisions you can do. I also like how he doesn’t call his parents mum and dad, instead he calls them by their first name.
This book is really good. I would definitely recommend it to people who just started a chapter book because you can just read it within like 50 pages, then read it again, choose different decisions for him. I loved it ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I really like this book. Making the decisions makes you want to read the book over and over again. There’s so many different pathways you can go, naughty or not naughty. Overall I would give this book a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I really like this book. Making all the decisions yourself made me want to read more and I also think more books should be like this.
So many good decisions and great story telling👍👍👍
We really liked this book where you had to choose the boy’s decisions. 🤩🤩🤩
I really enjoyed it was really a great choice for Bookfest. I loved reading it. It was full of mystery where you are in charge.
I read The Boy With Big Decisions for the longlist of books at the start and fairly enjoyed it. I liked how you could choose your own stories and if you wanted Fred to get into trouble or stay really well-behaved. I liked how you could compare which endings you got with friends aswell. All I know is that a lot of people in my class really liked this book. Bye!
⭐⭐⭐
I really liked the way you choose how you read the story. In every chapter there are twists and turns. You can never guess what’s going to happen next. 9/10
Hhhiiiiiiiiiiiiii it’s Issy McB. Do you like Inkbound?
This book is pretty good. I like how we could choose our own adventures and make good or bad decisions. It was pretty good but there are better books like that.
I like this book because of the control you have the control over Fred and I also like the characters in this book such as Madeleine and John.
I love this book because there are so many ways you can go and it is so life-like!
I liked it because you can choose the next move. But I think it is for more younger readers or people who don’t like reading.😍😄🙂
I recommend this book because it was the first book that really intrigued me to go home and read more. It pulls you in when you get to make your own decisions and choose your own path.
I love this book and how you can choose your endings and I can’t belive I haven’t heard of the author before. 5/5 stars.
The Boy With Big Decisions was a very creative book, it had lots of interesting choices. What I liked about it was when you could choose what you want. It was not like a normal book where sometimes it had photos and loads of pages full of words, you could choose. It was great. I would read it again if I could.
A slightly funny, slightly serious adventure. A good book for all. I really recommend this book because choosing your next turn puts a spin where the possibilities are endless. 5 stars.
By Caiden: I really enjoyed this book because you could choose your own pathways and there was a map at the back which showed the decisions you could have made. You could choose between two schools, there was one school were you could do what you want but at the other school you had to homework and SATS! I liked the book as well because of the map at the book where you could see the pathways you could have made.
By Jack: I loved The Boy With Big Decisions (great title by the way), I loved that you can see all the decisions you have made. You can make all the bad decisions and make all the good decisions.
I love this book and how you can choose your endings and I can’t believe I haven’t heard of the author before. 5/5 stars.
We really enjoyed the book because we got to choose the way the story went, it was a really good experience reading it. We’ve read many books in our life but this stood out the most. If we were to rate the book then we would give it a 10\10. I’m so happy that Helen Rutter had the idea to make this brilliant book it is so good. Thank you Helen Rutter!
We really enjoyed this book. We loved the thought of a choose your own adventure. The many different endings had us wanting to read them all!
Our favourite ending might have been ending number 2. We highly recommend!