The Maths Test Boss-Fight

Bo was six. He did not like maths.

The maths test on Friday felt, to him, like the boss-fight at the end of a video game.

His brother Sven, who was nine and very into video games, had explained to Bo that boss-fights were not impossible. They just looked impossible. The trick was: you broke them into smaller pieces.

"Don't try to win the whole boss-fight at once," Sven had said. "You learn one move. Then you learn another. Then you put them together. That's how you beat the dragon."

The maths test had ten questions. Bo had been doing some of them well in class. Some, he could not do at all.

Bo wrote out the test paper from last week. He looked at the ten kinds of question.

He could do question 1 (counting up). Easy.

He could do question 2 (counting down). Mostly easy.

He could do question 3 (adding two single numbers). Easy if he used his fingers.

He could not do question 4 (taking away). It made his head go fuzzy.

He could do question 5 (which number is bigger). Easy.

Bo wrote them out as a list. He drew a green tick by the ones he could do. He drew a red question mark by the ones he could not.

Three red question marks.

"Right," said Bo, in his best video-game voice. "Three boss moves to learn."