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Updated November 19, 2003
Randall's Wall, by Carol Fenner (Junior)
Walls can serve many functions. They can create rooms, houses, define yards and build barriers around people. Randall has built an invisible wall around himself that no one is allowed to penetrate. His wall keeps out the cruelty of his classmates and his less than perfect home life when he retreats behind it. Inside the wall Randall does not have to think about his abusive father or his tormented suffering mother who never leaves the house. He does not have to think about the bed bugs or no running water or no clean clothes or no toilet. Behind his wall he can dream of picnics and riding on his uncle’s motorcycle and a picture perfect life. He can retreat into his drawings behind the wall. When a new classmate ignores his wall and even more remarkably takes him to her home and introduces him to bathing, clean clothes and a normal family, that wall begins to crumble.