About the author

Onjali Q Rouf is a best-selling author. She is of Bangladeshi heritage and her work is informed in part by her experiences growing up including incidences of racism. The Boy at the Back of the Class is her debut (first) children’s novel, and it uses her experience of helping refugee families in refugee camps in Calais and Dunkirk. The Boy at the Back of the Class was first published in 2019 and won the Blue Peter Book award for Best Story and the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize in 2019.

​Think of one question would you like to ask her.

​Are there any word to clarify?

​Using a safe search on the Internet, or the Atlas we have used in topic, can you locate and label the following countries:

• China

• England

• Syria

• Your home country

​The opening paragraph

​Read through the opening paragraph a couple times and be prepared to answer the following question:

How does the Onjali Q. Raúf create suspense in the first paragraph?

​Continue to read the paragraphs in the first chapter

​On a piece of scratch paper, list the things that you are finding our about the narrator, character and setting.