The Whipping Boy

The Whipping Boy is a children's novel by the American writer Sid Fleischman, first published in 1986 by Greenwillow Books. It won the Newbery Medal.

Prince Horace, known to everyone as Prince Brat, is the heir to the throne and cannot be touched, so the palace keeps a whipping boy: an orphan named Jemmy who takes the prince's punishments for him. Jemmy has picked up reading, writing and arithmetic while living indoors, and he spends his days being beaten for someone else's behaviour. When the prince decides on a whim to run away and insists that Jemmy come with him as his servant, the two of them end up outside the palace, and the difference between the boy who was beaten and the boy who was never touched is what they have to work with.

Fleischman wrote short comic novels for children, and this one is set in an unnamed historical kingdom rather than a dated reign, with brief chapters carried mostly by dialogue. The plot runs on the comic reversals of two boys from opposite ends of the same kingdom.