English

**Interview with an author.** For this project we had do write an interview being one of the characters in the book Face by Benjamin Zephaniah.
====**Hello Benjamin as you know my name is Martin and I'm the main character in your book Face. Today we are going to have a short interview about the book and much more. **==== ====**1- In Face you seem to know how children’s psychology works. How do you do that? **==== ====Well that’s an interesting question. I just remember what it was like when I was 15! And of course the type of language can be a challenge – but I just listen to kids and how they talk. ==== ====**2- Did face have anything to do with you and your life? **====

**3- What was your inspiration to write this book? **
====Well Martin, I didn't know I was going to do this book and I really didn't have the intention to do a book at that time, it was all just things that life throws at you,I just go with the flow, it was the unexpected. I guess it all started when i started wondering what prejudices a person with a disfigured face would come across. Was discrimination by face the same as discrimination by race? Was he ever bullied? What does real beauty mean? Who were his friends and lovers? These were the issues I wanted to explore in 'Face'. ====

**4- Why did you make my face the way it was? **
====Well When I was young there was this guy in school, he was the cool kid with the beautiful girlfriend, but he did drugs. One day he got high, stole a car and killed himself. I compared it a lot to how your character is and the accident that happened. ====

**5- Why did you involve bullying in the story? **
====Well bullying is always there and specially with people that don”t look the same as everyone and little kids don’t understand you aren’t supposed to laugh at people, they don’t know it’s discrimination... It was just part of the lesson i wanted to teach. ==== ====**6- I'm always getting into trouble, did you ever get in trouble when you were my age? **==== ====When I was your age I thought I was a tough kid, I had dyslexia and left at the age of 13, i felt kind of cool leaving school but I missed out on my education I definitely got in trouble but I didn't take any drugs. ==== ====**7- Am I going to come up in another of your novels? **==== ====I’m not really sure, i don’t know but i am definitely going to keep on writing poems and novels. ==== ====**8- Could you give me a short plot of the novel? the shortest one you can think of. **==== ====This is the story of a boy whose life changes when he makes one wrong decision, he isn't a bad person, he is just like me or you, another 'face' in the crowd. ====

**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">10- How did you come up with him? **
====<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> I have a friend that has a very disfigured face and still he's just great! He goes out with really gorgeous women and people just love him. ====