Thirty days. Two completely different lives. One unforgettable adventure.

Thirteen-year-old Noah Adebayo lives in Cedar Hill, one of the wealthiest parts of Riverton. His enormous modern house has voice-controlled technology, a swimming pool and more rooms than his family knows what to do with. He attends prestigious Kingsmere College, where every grade, competition and future achievement seems to matter.

From the outside, Noah’s life looks perfect.

Inside, he feels as though every minute has been planned for him—and everyone except Noah has already decided who he should become.

Across the river in Harbour End, Maisie Flynn lives in a cramped flat above her family’s busy café. She shares her home with her mother, stepfather, grandmother and younger siblings. There is always somebody talking, somebody needing help and something that must be done.

Maisie loves her family, but she is tired of being the person everyone depends on. She dreams of becoming an architect, although part of her worries that wanting a different future means rejecting the people she loves.

When Noah and Maisie meet during a joint school debate about what makes a good childhood, their disagreement quickly becomes personal. Each insists that the other would never survive their life.

So they decide to prove it.

For one extraordinary month, Noah and Maisie exchange:

• homes and bedrooms;
• families and responsibilities;
• schools and uniforms;
• friendship groups;
• daily routines;
• and almost everything they believe about one another.

Noah must adapt to noisy mornings, mixed-up lunchboxes, younger siblings, café customers and a school where nobody is impressed by his expensive blazer. Maisie must navigate an automated house that refuses to understand her, formal family dinners, wealthy classmates and opportunities she never imagined she might have.

The exchange soon brings unexpected discoveries.

Noah finds a talent for cooking and begins drawing a comic for the Harbour View school newspaper. Maisie enters an architectural challenge and finally experiences the quiet, resources and encouragement she needs to develop her ideas.

But enjoying their exchanged lives creates new problems.

Old friends feel abandoned. Private jokes become public humiliation. School rumours spread. First-crush feelings become awkward. Family secrets emerge, and Noah and Maisie discover that their mothers once faced a friendship conflict surprisingly similar to their own.

Then the Riverton City Quest places their two schools on opposing teams.

One side wants to build an impressive new innovation pavilion. The other hopes to save The Lantern, an ageing community centre that provides essential support to local children and families.

As competition, friendship problems and family pressures collide, Noah and Maisie must decide whether they are still rivals—or whether the best solution can only be created together.

When a violent storm turns the final challenge into a real emergency, everything they have learnt about one another’s worlds is put to the test.

Funny, fast-moving and full of heart, The Month We Swapped Worlds is a contemporary coming-of-age adventure about two children discovering that no family is perfect, no life is as simple as it appears, and loving where you come from does not mean you are forbidden from changing where you are going.

Readers will discover

• A lively one-month family and school exchange
• Alternating Noah and Maisie viewpoints
• Funny family disasters and school misunderstandings
• Friendship conflicts and realistic reconciliation
• Gentle first-crush and relationship themes
• Questions about wealth, opportunity and responsibility
• A suspenseful city challenge and storm rescue
• Positive messages about ambition, empathy and belonging
• Seventeen black-and-white interior illustrations
• A complete and emotionally satisfying ending

Ideal for independent readers aged 10–15 who enjoy contemporary adventures, school stories, friendship drama, family comedy and meaningful coming-of-age fiction.

Title: The Month We Swapped Worlds
Author: Eric Henry
Publisher: Questbound Studios Ltd
Format: Illustrated paperback novel
Interior: Black-and-white text and illustrations
Page count: 228 pages
Recommended age: 10–15 years
Language: English
Finished book size: 132 × 197 mm, as specified by the supplied BookVault template.