Clarice's extraordinarily ordinary family is under pressure. Dad keeps muttering about how "there might be a reshuffle going on at work", while mum spends her life "gribbling about pants on the floor and shoes on the sofa". And as for her brother, Minal Cricket, he "tends to be utterly a nuisance". Meanwhile, Mrs Wilburton, the school teacher who insists that Clarice sets a book project "which sounds utterly dreary", until, that is, Miss Bean realises there is a prize.