My Name is Leon: Overview (AQA GCSE English Literature): Revision Note
Exam code: 8702
My Name is Leon: Overview
The My Name is Leon question is part of Paper 2, Section A of your GCSE examination. You are expected to write one essay-length answer to one set question and, unlike with the Shakespeare and 19th-century novel questions, you will not be given an extract from the text. This can seem daunting at first, but this page contains some helpful information, and links to more detailed revision note pages, that will enable you to feel confident answering any question on My Name is Leon. This page includes:
Who is Kit de Waal?
A summary of My Name is Leon
A brief overview of what is required in the exam
My Name is Leon characters
My Name is Leon context
My Name is Leon themes
My Name is Leon quotes
Top tips for the highest grade
Who is Kit de Waal?
Kit de Waal is a British novelist and short-story writer. She was born in Birmingham in 1960 to a Black African-Caribbean father and a white Irish mother, and grew up in a household where her mother worked as a foster carer.
Before she began writing, de Waal spent years working in criminal and family law, and wrote training manuals on fostering and adoption. Both her childhood and her legal work lie behind My Name is Leon, her first novel, published in 2016.
De Waal knows the care system from the inside. The novel is exact about the small, practical cruelties of being moved between homes. It also explains why she chose social realism: she sets Leon in a real Birmingham, during real events of the early 1980s, rather than in an invented town. For more on how de Waal tells the story, see the My Name is Leon: Writer’s Methods and Techniques page.
My Name is Leon summary
My Name is Leon is a novel by Kit de Waal, published in 2016 and set in Birmingham in the early 1980s. It follows nine-year-old Leon as he enters the care system, and it asks what happens to a child who is repeatedly rejected by the adult world.
Leon and his baby brother Jake are taken away from their mother, Carol, after she has a breakdown and can no longer look after them. They are placed with a foster carer, Maureen, whose home offers Leon a warmth, and a security, that Carol could never consistently provide.
Jake, who is white, is quickly adopted. Leon, who is mixed race, is not. Separated from his brother and from his mother, the quiet, watchful Leon is left adrift.
When Maureen falls ill, Leon is moved again, to her sister Sylvia. A new bike and the men he meets at the local allotments — Tufty and Mr Devlin — give him a kind of hope, and a first sight of the racial and political tensions of the time as the police target his community. But Leon is still quietly planning: collecting the things he thinks he will need to find Jake, find Carol and put his family back together.
For a more detailed summary, please see the My Name is Leon: Plot Summary page.
How is My Name is Leon assessed in the exam?
Paper 2 requires you to answer four questions (three on poetry) in 2hrs 15min. That means you have approximately 45 minutes to plan, write and check your My Name is Leon essay
Paper 2 is worth 96 marks and accounts for 60% of your overall GCSE grade
The My Name is Leon essay is worth 34 marks in total, because it also includes 4 marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar
Section A of Paper 2 contains the My Name is Leon question and you are required to answer only one of the two printed questions on the novel
Unlike the Shakespeare and 19th-century novel questions, you will not receive an extract of the novel in your exam
It is also a closed-book exam, which means you will not have access to a copy of the text in your exam either
You will be asked a question that asks you to analyse and write in detail about an aspect of My Name is Leon
For a much more detailed guide on answering the My Name is Leon question, please see our revision notes on How to Answer the Modern Prose and Drama Essay Question.
My Name is Leon characters
The characters you should focus on when revising My Name is Leon are:
Leon
Carol
Maureen
Tufty
Sylvia
Mr Devlin
It is always vital to remember — when considering My Name is Leon, or any text — that characters are deliberate constructions created by a writer for a purpose. These characters often represent ideas, or belief systems, and a writer like de Waal uses them to explore those ideas. For more details, please see the My Name is Leon: Characters revision notes page.
My Name is Leon context
Understanding how to include context in a GCSE essay is challenging, so it is first necessary to figure out what examiners really mean when they talk about context. They define context not as historical information, or biographical facts about a writer, but as the ideas and perspectives explored by a writer through their text. Therefore, the My Name is Leon context you should explore in your essay response is not a history of the social services, or facts about Kit de Waal’s own life, but ideas about:
Race in 1980s Britain
The care system and childhood neglect
Authority and authoritarianism
Lots of these ideas and perspectives are still relevant today, so your own opinions on them are valid, and examiners welcome them in an essay. For a detailed breakdown of the contextual topics listed above, see the My Name is Leon: Context page.
My Name is Leon themes
Understanding the themes that are prevalent in My Name is Leon will enable you to reach the highest levels of the GCSE mark scheme. This is because to be rewarded top marks on your essay, you need to take what examiners call a “conceptualised approach”: a detailed and perceptive exploration of de Waal’s ideas and intentions. The main themes explored by de Waal in My Name is Leon are:
Childhood neglect
Social injustice and discrimination
Family and heritage
Loss
You are encouraged to explore other themes that de Waal examines in her novel, because bringing original ideas when interpreting a text is always rewarded highly at GCSE. However, the above list makes a great place to start, and detailed breakdowns of each of these themes can be found on our My Name is Leon: Themes page.
My Name is Leon quotes
It is of course important to learn quotations for your My Name is Leon exam question, especially since it is a closed-book exam and you will not have a printed extract on your paper. However, it is worth stating here that examiners value “references” to the novel just as highly as direct quotations: this is when students pinpoint individual moments in the novel, rather than quoting what the characters say. In order to select references really successfully, it is extremely important that you know My Name is Leon itself very well, including the order of the events that take place. This detailed chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the plot will help you to revise the chronology of My Name is Leon.
Of course, it is also useful to revise a few — very well selected — quotations from the novel that can be used in a variety of essays on different themes and characters. Luckily, we have made that selection for you! For a detailed analysis of each of these quotations, see our My Name is Leon: Key Quotations page, and for quotations grouped by character see the My Name is Leon: Character Quotations page.
Top tips for the highest grade
Please see our revision pages on the Modern Prose and Drama exam for guides on:
Sources
De Waal, K. (2016), My Name is Leon, Viking
Unlock more, it's free!
Join the 100,000+ Students that ❤️ Save My Exams
the (exam) results speak for themselves:
Was this revision note helpful?
Build on this topic
