Goggle Eyes – Anne Fine

‘Give me your library ticket. Go on. Hand it over.’ I shook my head and jumped back fast. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Hand it over. It’s confiscated.’ ‘Oh, no, it isn’t!’ I said, pantomime-style. ‘Oh, yes, it is!’ ‘Oh, no, it isn’t!’ All the time, keeping the table between us, I kept moving steadily and stealthily towards the back door. Mum suddenly made as if to chase me; and, making a huge effort, Gerald Faulkner managed to control his laughter long enough to catch her in his arms and hold her back, while I got safely through the door.

‘Bye-eee!’ I called, haring down the garden path. I sang all the way to the library. I couldn’t help it. One or two people stared (I’m not the greatest singer in the world) but I didn’t care. I felt light and happy. It always cheers me up when Mum stops worrying about work, or the mortgage, or how we’re turning out, and just acts daft.

And it seemed ages since we’d had a really silly scene like that, with her halfway serious and halfway fooling, and not caring for a moment how everything turned out. And maybe it had helped, having Goggle-eyes there watching everything, laughing. Maybe Mum just felt far more cheerful when she had company. She and Dad used to muck about quite a bit before things went wrong.

Maybe there were advantages to having someone else around the place. I thought about it quite a lot while I was in the library. And then again when I walked home, the long way, and saw Jude hanging upside down from the park railings, her hair sweeping the grass. She’d taken to him, too, right from the start. She’d let him help her with her project on The Sea Shore, she ate his chocolates, and she sat on his knee through all the repeats of Blackadder. I’d watch her out of the corner of my eye, practically rolling off his lap onto the floor whenever something struck Goggle-eyes as particularly amusing.

It didn’t seem to bother Jude that she was curled in the arms of the opposition, a die-hard, reds-under-the-beds deterrent- monger who actually believes that on the day nuclear weapons are dismantled in Britain, Russians will march in from Moscow, stamping the snow from the steppes off their feet.

Anne Fine was born and educated in the Midlands, and now lives in County Durham. She has written numerous highly acclaimed and prize-winning books for children and adults. Her novel The Tulip Touch won the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year Award; Goggle-Eyes won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award and the Carnegie Medal, and was adapted for television by the BBC; Flour Babies won the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year Award; Bill’s New Frock won a Smarties Prize, and Madame Doubtfire has become a major feature film.

Anne Fine was named Children’s Laureate in 2001. OceanofPDF.com Other books by Anne Fine Books for younger readers Care of Henry Countdown Design-a-Pram The Diary of a Killer Cat The Haunting of Pip Parker Jennifer’s Diary Loudmouth Louis Notso Hotso Only a Show Press Play Roll Over Roly The Same Old Story Every Year Scaredy-Cat Stranger Danger?

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: cc53525008ef7c71
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 726,940 bytes (0.693 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9780141944272
• Pages: 111
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 189.29 minutes
• Total Words: 37,858
• Total Characters: 207,193
• Average Words per Page: 341.06
• Average Characters per Page: 1866.6

Most Frequent Words

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