Being Ben by Jacqueline Roy
A quirky Racing Read featuring a British Jamaican family in a contemporary setting. Ben is a boy with a lively imagination and a tendency to worry. He's scared of lots of things - the new baby (it will have green hair and yellow eyes and poo and scream all the time), nasty stripes (they're everywhere) and the class bully (although it turns out he's scared of a few things himself...) When a neighbour's pet snake escapes a strange reversal occurs: suddenly everyone else is terrified, and Ben becomes the local hero, because there's one thing he's not afraid of: snakes!