Flour Babies

No Exploding Custard Tins? No Maggot Factory? When 4C find themselves looking after sacks of flour as their contribution to the school's Science Week, they are appalled. For 21 days, each eight-pound sack must be kept clean, dry and safe night and day just as if it were a baby. And, what's more, each boy has to write a diary of his feelings for his sack. Everyone is in revolt especially when they discover how much trouble a flour baby can be. But for Simon Martin, looking after his flour baby causes him to think long and hard about his own father and to begin to understand some of the reasons why he might have left when Simon was only a baby. Flawlessly structured, Flour Babies is a joy to listen to as Anne Fine's control of the timing allows the story to unfold elegantly and thoughtfully. It requires little more of the reader than a straightforward range of voices for characters from 4C's mostly benign if permanently exasperated Mr Cartwright to Simon and his classmates' joking classroom exchanges, all of which Richard Mitchley executes easily.