When your annoying little brother shares your room, your older brother is in the tunnel of adolescence, your dad hides in his office eating rocky road ice cream and swaying to Frank Sinatra, and your mother listen to foreign language tapes in a candlelit bathtub, what can you do to get away from it all?
“We’ve been in the car for two days now. Mom and Dad are at the breaking point. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want them to get mad at me-it just happens.”
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.
“But it isn’t just that. It’s everything. Everything is wrong. Susie’s mom doesn’t say the right things. Susie’s mom’s friend is annoying. Susie’s other friends are immature. Susie hates everything.”