Annie John

Annie walks to her new school alone, and everyone seems to know everyone else except for her. She is unimpressed with Miss Moore, the English headmistress, who looks like a prune, smells like a fish, sounds like an owl, and peers around the room as if “hoping to see something wrong” (36). Annie recalls her mother’s only criticism of the English: that they do not wash frequently enough, hence their fishy smell. However, Annie admires her homeroom teacher, Miss Nelson, who instructs Annie’s class to compose autobiographical essays. Annie enjoys writing in her new notebook and is happy to have gotten rid of her old one, the cover of which had a picture of a woman wearing a crown and voluminous jewels, though Annie doesn’t know who the woman is. Listening to the other girls read their imaginative and playful compositions, Annie grows nervous about her own more serious one. She realizes that she is not the center of her world anymore.

When Annie reads her essay, Miss Nelson loves it. Annie includes the text of her narrative in this chapter. It describes a time when she and her mother went to the beach. Though her mother could swim like a fish, Annie only felt safe in the water when she clung to her mother’s neck.