Anne Fine Quotes

Flour Babies centers around Simon Martin, his peers in Form 4C and their experiences of a ‘Child Development’ project, where they each take on the responsibility of a small sack of flour for several weeks.

“The concept behind these types of educational projects is to on the one hand install a sense of responsibility into as yet often woefully carefree and naively irresponsible teenagers (how it feels to be totally and wholly on the proverbial hook for something, in this case a flour baby) and on the other hand to make both male and female adolescents think and consider twice with regard to sexuality, with regard to especially unprotected intercourse, as parenthood is shown to be, parenthood means continuous commitment, responsible thinking (or at least, it should).”

Simon even somewhat coming to terms, even being able to fathom a bit why his father abandoned the family, why fatherhood was so traumatic an experience for him and to him that he left, that he ran away.

“While the flour baby project has indeed left Simon wiser and more tolerant, he is and still can be rather a handful for his mother and his teachers, although he did actually and in fact do a much much better job caring for his flour baby than many if not most of his schoolmates, than his school friends did.”

“When the annual school science fair comes round, Mr Cartwright’s class don’t get to work on the Soap Factory, the Maggot Farm or the Exploding Custard Tins. To their intense disgust they get the Flour Babies - sweet little six-pound bags of flour that must be cared for at all times.”

“Simon Martin & his 4C classmates are a class with problems and are perceived as too stupid to participate in the difficult projects for the science fair....more’s the pity for them as the thought of blowing things up is something this group relish.”

Although the main protagonist of Anne Fine’s Flour Babies (opinionated and often rather annoying and careless teenager Simon Martin) really and majorly despises school work, he does nevertheless and grudgingly accept his assignment of having to take home a large bag of flour and then look after and take care of said bag like a baby, like a newborn infant.

“Now for Simon, who like the rest of his classmates, is asked to keep a diary of his feelings about being one hundred percent responsible for the welfare (the health) of his assigned flour baby, his feelings continuously mature throughout Flour Babies, moving from initial anger and disgust to for the first time actually beginning to understand why his mother is often so stressed out and irritated.”

“And while the ending of Flour Babies is fortunately and appreciatively cautiously optimistic and hopeful, thankfully and realistically, Anne Fine also does not simply and completely have Simon Martin be transformed from somewhat of a slacker, a teenager with often annoying and frustrating attitudes and habits to some kind of a glowingly pure hero.”

“They must be looked after exactly as if they where real babies and this is a task that Simon Martin is not looking forward to one little bit. But as the weeks progress he begins to find himself caring for his bag of flour and starting to question his own life and actions.”

His mother forces him to put on a pretty pink frock with fiddly shell buttons, and then he has to go to school.

Forced to go to school in a frilly pink dress, Bill discovers one of the worst days in his life is about to begin. Baffled by the way things are just different for girls, Bill falls headlong into trouble.

When he gets home he gets changed into his jeans and shirt realizing that he’s finally a boy again.

It allows boys and girls to see each others worlds as in the story, Bill is traumatized to find that he cannot play football because he is a girl.

The boys take up the whole playground playing while the girls must sit at the edge of the playground.

The day is filled with adventures and events that Bill has never before encountered and is a huge learning curve for him. At school Bill is faced with a variety of obstacles that force him to see the way that girls are treated.

However worst of all, Bill is cast to play Rapunzel in the school play. He finds it difficult as a girl as he sees how they are treated differently at his school and becomes very frustrated at how he is expected to behave in a certain way, as a girl.

At school that day, he faces the reality that girls are treated very differently from boys while he struggles in vain to stop his dress getting dirty.

One morning, almost as if in a dream, Billy wakes up to find that he has turned into a girl!

Bill finds is so strange being a girl and everything is so different. He spends his day being forced to keep his dress clean but eventually it gets ruined.

Then Miranda advertises for a cleaning lady who will look after and mind the children after work - and Daniel gets the job, disguised as Madame Doubtfire.

The parents are always fighting with each other and verbally bashing each other (separately) in front of the kids.

The book mainly focuses on how divorces affect the children. The book tries to be fun at times, but the characters are so toxic that it takes the fun away.

You had real arguments between the parents that would blow up in front of the children, just like in real life. The children were forced to find coping mechanisms to handle the stress placed on them.

It is a great bedtime read and funny at certain parts and sad and touching at others. The story moves very fast so try to savor those arguments because they mean so much.

You get a better sense of how they were in their own homes but also how the children felt about the whole mess, because that’s what divorce creates, a mess.

The children bounce to and from their volatile mother, Miranda, and their out-of-work actor father, Daniel.

Lydia, Christopher and Natalie are used to domestic turmoil. Their parents’ divorce has not made family life any easier in either home.

The story of Miranda and Daniel are one that many children today, more so than ever, have to deal with because of the divorce of their parents. What made this story so special was the writing was so real.

If parents would only take the time to think about that and communicate more before having kids, there would be less of a need for therapy for adults.