Michael Morpurgo
About Author
Multi-award winning author, Michael Morpurgo, is one of Britain's best-loved writers for children. This picture shows him signing books for children at the Party at the Palace in the summer, 2006.
Michael was born in 1943 and attended schools in London, Sussex and Canterbury. He studied English and French at London University and then took up a career in teaching, first at a primary school in Kent. That was when he started telling stories to children and then began writing them down.
In 1976 Michael and his wife, Clare, started the charity Farms For City Children (FFCC), which gives young children from inner city and urban areas a week on a farm, where they work actively and purposefully. There are now three farms Nethercott in Devon, Treginnis in Wales and Wick in Gloucestershire - and Michael divides his time between working with the children on the farm and writing.
During his writing career, Michael has won many prizes, including the Smarties Prize, The Writers Guild Award and the Blue Peter Book Award for his recent novel, Private Peaceful.
From 2003 to 2005 he was the Children's Laureate, a role which took him all over the UK to promote literacy and reading, and in 2005 he was named the Bookseller's Association Author of the Year.
Author link
Interview
MICHAEL MORPURGO
MAY 2011
Michael Morpurgo talks to ReadingZone about War Horse and getting children to love stories.
When I speak to bestselling children's author Michael Morpurgo, he has recently returned from a trip to the US to watch the opening night of War Horse on Broadway.
Being there, he says, was "like being in movie", not because of the sometimes extraordinary events that have taken him there, but because he felt like he was surrounded by actors and stage sets. "I've never been to New York before and it's so iconic - I couldn't look at a policeman without thinking I was in a film set!".
In his own life, the recent successes of his novel War Horse has been just as extraordinary as any movie. His book War Horse, which he wrote some 30 years ago, has gone from being a fairly successful novel to winning standing ovations on stage in the West End and now on Broadway. Last year, Speilberg began filming War Horse on location in the UK.
Set in World War I the story follows a young farmhand who signs up for the war in an effort to bring his horse Joey home after it is sold to the cavalry and sent to France.
Morpurgo says, "I never believed this could happen to any of my books. You write and hope, but never hope for this because this kind of thing never happens!" If any of his books were going to be successful, he believed it would have been Kensuke's Kingdom rather than War Horse.
The book "lay dormant" for 30 years, says Morpurgo. "If it sold 2,000 copies a year I'd be surprised, but credit to my publisher, Egmont, because they always kept it in print." In the US, it was soon out of print.
Morpurgo had hoped at one time that he'd be able to get a film made of War Horse but, after five or six years of trying, he had to admit defeat.
War Horse was eventually picked up by the National Theatre because they wanted to put on a performance using hand-held puppets. "They needed a story with an animal at its heart. It took two years to get it going and then it just seemed to catch fire. It went to the West End and a film producer happened to come and see it and got Speilberg over to see it within ten days. If you tried to write that, people would say, 'put it away, it's a fairytale'!"
Morpurgo loves serendipity and points to another surprising set of circumstances linked to War Horse. The play is currently up for a Tony Award (Best Play) and one of the other nominated plays is Jerusalem which, like War Horse, is also now doing very well on Broadway.
Morpurgo says, "I went to see Jerusalem some time ago and was surprised that all the characters in the play had local names to tradesmen in the village where I live." After some enquiries, he discovered that Jez Butterworth, the writer, had come to the village to write the play. "So you have on Broadway at the moment two plays that have their origins in a tiny little village in Devon that are both up for Tonies!"
Last autumn, Morpurgo met Speilberg during the filming of War Horse at Castle Combe village. "My wife and I were allowed to take part in a crowd scene, which was quite interesting for about ten minutes and after that it got a bit boring. Then a girl comes up to me, about 18 years old, dressed in 1914 costume, and said she was the great granddaughter of Captain Budgett."
Budgett was one of the veterans to whom Morpurgo had spoken and who had helped inspire the writing of War Horse. Morpurgo says, "She said, 'I came along to be an extra on a play, and the play happens to be this one!' I introduced her to Speilberg who also loved the coincidence."
Morpurgo attributes the recognition now being given to War Horse to our own recent history. "At the time it was published, there weren't many books being written about the past and those that were being written about the World Wars were quite sentimental. Sadly, now, war is at the front of people's minds. There's a moment in the play (it's not my line) when a farmer hands his son a knife and says, 'This knife went with your grandfather to the first Afghan war', and you hear people's surprise in the audience because here we are again."
Despite his success, Morpurgo believes that, had he started as a writer today, he would not have succeeded. "I was a teacher and began started writing very slowly in educational publishing, with books that hardly sold anything, but I had a learning and growing period. That doesn't happen now. Because of the commercial pressures, people want instant success."
These days Morpurgo divides his year so that six months he is writing, and six months he is out and about. He also tries to write 'outside the block', for example turning his hand to journalism, and chooses more carefully what he writes.
He says it is becoming harder to write, though. "Every book is like writing the first book. It's not like riding a bike. You're still facing a blank piece of paper and you still need the confidence to start and finish."
More recently, he's begun writing short stories that will form part of a biography of him that is being written by Maggie Ferguson called Michael Morpurgo: A Life in Stories. It will be divided into sections about his life, written by Ferguson, with each section including a short story by Morpurgo that relates to that period of his life. It will be published in 2012.
Morpurgo is passionate about stories and story-telling. He was horrified to hear Michael Gove canvassing the idea that young people should read 50 books a year. He says, "The problem with aims and policies is that it simplifies what is difficult. Of course we want children to read more and more widely, but to stick 50 on it and a list, that is short-changing the knowledge of teachers and parents. Teachers should be recommending books that have caught fire for them, not because they are on a government list."
He adds vehemently, "You can't have alongside this so-called commitment to children and education a government that thinks it's alright that Sure Start stops and that libraries close down. Either you believe that early life and childhood experiences will contribute to children growing into satisfied citizens, or you don't."
It is only by enabling teachers to build a knowledge of literature that a love of books can be passed on to children, says Morpurgo. "Learning about children's literature should be part of teachers' training courses so that they come to the classroom with a wealth of knowledge of children's literature and so that they can bring those stories to life."
There also needs to be room in the school timetable for storytelling to happen, he says. "Make it storytime in every classroom in the country between 3pm and 3.30pm, where children have the room to enjoy the stories."
Morpurgo is emphatic that there can be "no improvement in our literacy skills if all we are doing is to force children to learn how to punctuate and spell." He adds, "If children haven't got that the words are fun and exciting, if they don't develop a love of stories long before they begin learning to read and write themselves, then by the time they get to primary school and the business of learning to read, they won't want to."
Michael Morpurgo's new book, Little Manfred, is published in June 2011.
