Roddy Doyle's "New Boy", from the book "The Deportees"

The story “New Boy”, by the author Roddy Doyle, describes the first day of school for nine-year-old Joseph, who had to leave Africa and has come to Ireland to live there.
In the first chapter of the story you get a good insight of how school works. When the children are loud, or just one of them disturbs class, the “teacher-lady”, or “Miss”, tells everybody to put their hands in the air. When they calmed down, they can put their hands down and by doing so, they hit the desk with both hands. Besides, the teacher says the word “now” really often, which is something Joseph noticed very quickly. After the “teacher-lady” had introduced Joseph to the class, she tells him to sit down in front of Christian Kelly, who immediately starts to annoy the black boy.
In the second chapter Christian is described as a “dangerous boy”, because after Hazel O’Hara defended Joseph, Christian told him that he was dead. Hazel O’Hara is described as a girl with magic eyes and it seems that Joseph fancies her a bit. Then Christian annoys Joseph again by holding his finger full of snot straight into Joseph’s face. The African boy then grabs his finger and pulls it so that Christian ended up lying on the floor. As soon as “Miss” saw it, everybody had to put their hands in the air again.
In chapter three the teacher decides to let Joseph sit somewhere else and chooses the place next to Hazel O’Hara, even though Seth Quinn, a friend of Christian, suggested letting him sit next to Pamela, a black girl. This just ended up in laughter after Pamela disagreed.
Chapter four starts with Seth Quinn, who is called to get at the blackboard to do a maths exercise. Unfortunately he doesn’t know the answer and is allowed to sit down. Joseph thinks that it was unfair from “Miss” to embarrass Seth in front of the class. Then it’s “little break” and after a talk with the teacher, Joseph is allowed to go to the schoolyard, where Christian throws a milk carton at him. By doing so, he demonstrated the start of a fight.
In the next chapter this whole fighting act is described. All the children are standing around Joseph, Christian and Seth and are cheering at them to start the fight. Christian is about to take the first step and pushes Joseph and as he was about to reach for him a second time, Joseph grabs his finger again. He pulls it till the “teacher-lady” comes to end this fight between the two boys.
The last chapter describes how Seth, Christian and Joseph are standing outside the class for receiving punishment, but eventually they were holding on to each other by telling the teacher that nothing happened. Hazel O’Hara tries to talk to the teacher and explain her that it was Christian who started the fight, but “Miss”, however, doesn’t listen and just sends her back into class, which made Hazel say “She’s a bitch, that one. I was only telling her”. This statement made “Miss” getting angry and the boys laugh. They made fun of their teacher by saying that she’s acting as if she was robbing a bank by shouting “now” and “hands in the air” all the time. In the end they didn’t get punished and were even described as the three musketeers. 

What makes the story so special is that in chapter five, during the fighting scene, Joseph is thinking of the time he was in Africa. The scene takes place in a schoolhouse, where his father was a teacher. Then he describes seeing some soldiers that were holding up a bell and dropping it, while he was hiding behind the school wall. Noises he heard were the bell, that his father was ringing every morning to call the children to school, gunfire, crying and screaming and sometimes a truck engine, but only when the bell wasn’t ringing, because it was a loud noise. At the time all the soldiers were out of the schoolhouse, he wanted to get into it and find his father. He was still frightened and didn’t enter. Finally he recognized his father behind the schoolhouse and ran to him. 

Heres's a short film of the "New Boy".

http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/new-boy/short-film

This film is just a little bit different than the original. Go and check out by yourself :)

My impression
At the end of the story, when he and the other two boys were about to be punished but somehow ended up in laughter, he thought of his father again and how he made him smile.

I really like the story by Roddy Doyle, because it shows how different cultures are and how differently behaviour is taught in the childhood. The difference between how Joseph is talking to his teacher and how his classmates are is huge. Josephs hasn’t the intention to speak impolitely with others or to annoy them, unlike Christian. However, the end is a great story as well. How these three rivals finally hold on to each other is just something you might not have expected to happen. Just a great story :)