This is a highly competent and timely monograph on a work which has received relatively little scholarly attention. The volume's purpose is to cover a number of the standard introductory questions pertaining to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, with particular focus on text Gs (Codex Sabaiticus 259). It also advances several original theses. Of particular interest are the arguments about the maleness of the portrait of Jesus, the rural setting of the narrative and the target audience of the work as children. The first of these is clearly an important discussion, providing a finely honed treatment of childhood and gender in the Umwelt: Jesus is not just a child in the Infancy Gospel, he is a boy. On the other hand, the discussion of both the constructed and real settings of the Infancy Gospel as rural veers towards the speculative. The last point, that the Infancy Gospel was intended ‘as a supplement or an alternative to the contemporary pagan canon’ of children's literature (p. 203), is partly argued as an alternative to the view according to which apocryphal literature is merely intended to fill in gaps: on this latter view, why such selectivity in the reference to Jesus' deeds – excepting the temple incident – at the ages of five and seven/eight? Aasgaard considers these ‘transitional points in children's socialization’ according to the conventions of the time. The author writes with a verve which, refreshingly, seems to emerge from an enjoyment of the text. As far as the present reviewer is aware, the most important secondary literature is fully discussed, with the added advantage of the author's facility in the Scandinavian literature (and there is even some Afrikaans). As well as being an important monograph making a series of arguments, appendices contain a transcription of the book's base text, Gs, with a translation, and subsequently surveys of the contents of various other infancy traditions. (Presumably appearing too late for the author to include was A. Terian's introduction and translation, The Armenian Gospel of the Infancy: with three early versions of the Protevangelium of James, Oxford 2008). The text and translation appended by Aasgaard should replace for most readers that in R. F. Hock, The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas (Polebridge 1995). The argument about the purpose of the book, while difficult to test, deserves to be taken as a serious possibility, and the other contentions in the volume are a valuable contribution to the study of this intriguing apocryphon.