Local author Anne Fine tells us about her new book, On The Wall.
All of us have known children for whom the move up from primary to secondary schooling has been a real worry.
Sometimes it’s the parents who are anxious, sometimes the child. Often both. After all, it can be testing to change from being one of the oldest and most responsible pupils in a safe and comfortable local setting, to becoming the youngest in a much bigger, and seemingly more anonymous, institution.
So I decided to write about how a class settles down in this, the often difficult and demanding “transition” year.
I had great fun choosing a “home class” bursting with individual characters whose personalities endlessly, and I hope amusingly, mesh and conflict, refracting on one another.
Children are such a mixed bunch. As a born reader who spent her earliest years with four bouncy sisters in a small council house, I’ve always yearned for peace and quiet. So I invented Finley, embarking on his first year at Windfields.
So many of those around him appear to feel most comfortable behind a wall of noise, or in frenzies of activity. But in the middle of all this, baffling and intriguing both his teachers and his classmates, Finley sits, invariably peacefully, either at his desk in classes or, during break times, on his favourite wall.
He’s a still centre of peace in all the vortexes of chaos that swirl around him.
Authors are famously nosey about how people tick, and I have known a child just like Finley. Over the years, my fascination with him grew and grew. Like horribly anxious Juliet, mystified Jeremy, tempestuous Arif and bossy Cherry, I found myself constantly asking, how does he do it?
I hope my young readers will find the mysterious and unpredictable effects that Finley has on those around him – from the most assertive to the shyest and least confident – as enlightening as they do. And I hope it allays, for children who are reaching the end of their primary years, many of the fears they might have about the change of school in store.
But most of all, as usual, I hope the book gives them a few good laughs and a really good read.
l On the Wall is published on September 5 by Old Barn Books. It can be ordered online or through any book shop.
