Tag Archive | Michael Morpurgo

The Mozart Question by Michael Morpurgo

Mar16

Powerful

The Mozart Question by Michael Morpurgo is a powerful children’s novel. It is perfect for ages ten years and over.

This is a tale simply but powerfully told. It introduces the reader to the power of music, memories and the holocaust. It is written in such a way as to inform but not to scare children into having nightmares.

Music transports us through time and space. We hear a piece of music and are immediately back somewhere in time. When that place is a concentration camp, we know why certain music is avoided as it causes great pain.

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Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo

Sep15

Absolutely Brilliant And Heartbreaking

Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo is a powerful and heartbreaking historical children’s novel. I happened upon it as my ten year old granddaughter was studying it at school. It appealed to both the historian and the fiction-lover in me.

Michael Morpurgo is a masterful story-teller. He writes Private Peaceful in the first person with the result that the story feels very personal to the reader. As we read, we are on a countdown through the night with the memories of seventeen year old Tommo.

We witness the desire to know that heaven exists. “I want to believe there’s a heaven… that death is not a full stop, and that we will all see one another again.” Surrounded by death on the battlefield, this is a hope to hold on to.

The Belgium Front was a wasteland where even God seemed absent. “He [God] has long since abandoned this place and all of us who live in it.” The faith of men was shaken. “I could no longer pretend to myself that I believed in a merciful god… I could believe only in the hell I was living in… it was man-made, not God-made.”

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Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo

Aug15

Awaken The Child In You

Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo is a delightful contemporary children’s adventure for ages eight years and over.

Once more Michael Morpurgo fires up a child’s imagination as we visit a desert island. The landscape is vividly painted through words.

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Friend Or Foe by Michael Morpurgo

Jun11

The Dilemma

Friend Or Foe by Michael Morpurgo is a powerful children’s historical novel just perfect for ages eight and over.

The novel is set during World War II and follows two evacuees to the West Country. The boys find themselves on a farm. “They were no longer going away, they were arriving.” Life is all about perspective. The boys turned a negative into a positive.

The boys are brave. “He’d promised himself he’d be brave when he said goodbye.” Bravery is ‘doing it afraid.’

Within the novel there is a moral dilemma. The boys have a choice to do the right thing but the right thing is not always easy. It is not always a black and white issue but a murky grey one. They have to be guided by their conscience.

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