AustLit

Nine-year-old Sam Kellow's family has fallen on hard times - the buyer for his mother's latest painting has disappeared, and his gambler father has no immediate prospects for making money. Therefore it falls to Sam to find the 'Big Bazoohley' - the windfall his father insists will arrive when they need it most - and he slips out of their Toronto hotel room to do just that. However, he is soon kidnapped by a strange couple who want to enter him in the Perfect Kiddo contest, in lieu of their own son who is in bed with chicken pox. The prize for the contest is a part in a commercial and $10,000, and it doesn't take Sam long to work out a way to turn this bizarre series of events into the solution for his family.