The Only Child Club Award-winning author

by Anne Fine (author) and Arthur Robins (illustrator)

Format: Paperback
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Product description

What do you miss when you don’t have siblings? Former Children’s Laureate and much-loved author Anne Fine aims to find out in this perfectly observed story of human behaviour.

From the author of Bill’s New Frock comes a gentle, humorous illustrated chapter book about the pros and cons of being an only child.

Ryan wants to start a club. An Only Child Club. He knows that as an only child he doesn’t always have the same experiences as some of his classmates. He recruits two similarly deprived friends who join him in an experimental few days of constant bickering, fighting over who gets the free gift from the cereal box and spending a whole day making a model, only to have it destroyed. Having had a taste of what it’s like to have siblings, the trio begin to realize that friends can be nearly as good as brothers and sisters – and often less annoying!

Product Details

Format

Paperback

ISBN

9781406355086

Publisher

Walker Books Ltd

Date published

March 6th, 2014

Accelerated Reader

AR book level: 3.2; Middle years; 1.0 points

Other details

64 pages

Condition

New

Author/Illustrator

Anne Fine

Anne Fine is a multi award-winning novelist, and was Children’s Laureate from 2001-2003. Her novels range from the wickedly funny Diary of a Killer Cat for young readers, to the provocative_Road of Bones_ for teenage readers.

Speaking about her work, Anne says: “A lot of my work, even for fairly young readers, raises quite serious social issues. I believe that many personal decisions have a social or political resonance, and the way people try to pick their way through tricky family situations interests me. But people won’t (and shouldn’t) read books that don’t hold their interest, and I still adore funny books. So since I write for the reader inside myself, I always end up with the kind of book I would have loved to read (if only someone else had bothered to write for me.”

More about Anne: “When I was young, it never occurred to me that I might be a writer. I think I must have thought that books were born on the library shelves. But I was good at writing stories, and I had a good deal of practice.

At school, I enjoyed languages most, and took French and Spanish, along with History, for A levels. That meant there was no room for English, and so for my whole life I have been able simply to read what I want when I want, and only for pleasure or interest. I suspect that this has been really important for the way I write, making it so much easier to think always of the reader.

I studied Politics and History at University, and the interest in political issues shows up in many of the books. After university I taught in a girls’ secondary school for a year — exhausting! — and then moved with my husband to Oxford, where I worked as an Information Officer for Oxfam. Though I was only in this job for two years, it changed my attitudes to money, to ‘things’, and to what is truly important in life, for ever.

In 1971 my first daughter was born. Unable to get to the library in a snowstorm to change my library books, in desperation I sat down and started to write a novel. Clearly this was the right job for me, for I have never stopped writing for more than a few weeks since.

My husband’s job took us to California, Arizona, Michigan and Canada, where our second daughter was born. In 1981 I returned to Edinburgh, and a few years later moved to County Durham, where I now live quietly in a stone house beside a river with Richard, my partner of fifteen years.”