What are the flour, babies? Flour babies are, as the name shows, six-pound (2,72 kg) sacks of flour that are meant to pass as babies in a scientific school experiment. The babies’ “parents”, charged with taking care of such a precious load for 3 weeks, are the 14 years old children from the naughtiest and worst learning class in an all boys school. The boys agree to take on the task as Simon Martin, their colleague and master of bad behaviour, assures that when the experiment ends they will be rewarded by an enormous flour explosion. Unfortunately for them, Simon just misheard a discussion in the teacher’s room. His hopes are raised in vain. However, the reader is eager to find out what this all means for Simon and his colleagues. Simon’s …show more content…
As the reader learns more about his past, the fact becomes understandable. Simon’s dad left him when he was just 16 weeks old. Therefore, this is an occasion for Simon to understand what it means to have a baby and why might his dad have left. And that is exactly what Simon does. He has all sort of epiphanies. In the interview below Anne Fine talks about the idea of sudden realisations. Children live in their own worlds, without having the same awareness of time as the adults do. Things are new for them. For adults, entering that mind frame is a struggle. When they are around 10 years old they suddenly begin having a sense of themselves. Anne Fine describes that from that moment they make choices and understand that they have options. Simon had already realised that he is a unique person, no one like him ever existed and no other will be again. The baby’s company makes him understand that he likes the intimate relationship that develops between the caregiver and the one cared for. In the beginning, he is so absorbed by this new “relationship” that doesn’t even care how that makes him look in the other boy’s eyes. He judges that He could have remained in a babies life. He wouldn’t have run