I have listened to a modern teacher moaning that she has 31 children in her classroom! In the early 1960's the normal September intake for five year olds was around 40 to 45 children at a time. Imagine what it was like when the headmistress decided to be "helpful" and take in a full intake from a newly built school that wasn't ready to open due to bad weather. One teacher, one classroom, and eighty five children!!!! All the children in this book are real. They had already struggled with various degrees of deprivation by the time they arrived in the classroom. They were "thrillable" by all sorts of new ideas and events. Once able to read and write the world was theirs to make of it what they could. And no doubt they did.