Michael Morpurgo
Michael Morpurgo
Michael Morpurgo, OBE, FRSL, FKC, DL is an English book author, poet, playwright, and librettist who is known best for children's novels such as War Horse. His work is noted for its "magical storytelling", for recurring themes such as the triumph of an outsider or survival, for characters' relationships with nature, and for vivid settings such as the Cornish coast or World War I. Morpurgo became the third British Children's Laureate, from 2003 to 2005...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth5 October 1943
CitySt Albans, England
There's a mouse in here with me. He's sitting there in the light of the lamp, looking up at me. He seems as surprised to see me as I am to see him. There he goes. I can hear him still, scurrying about somewhere under the hayrick. I think he's gone now. I hope he comes back. I miss him already.
I think there's something about studying a book which will kill it if you're not careful.
My Albert married his Maisie Brown as he said he would. But I think she never took to me, nor I to her for that matter. Perhaps it was a feeling of mutual jealousy.
I'm still not sure I want to be a writer. I think of myself as a storyteller more.
There's room for all sorts of magic and miracles in this world - that's what I think.
stories make you think and dream; books make you want to ask questions
Read a lot - poems, prose, stories, newspapers, anything. Read books and poems that you think you will like and some that you think might not be for you. You might be surprised.
When I was growing up in the Forties and Fifties, you could hide your children from the difficulties of life, but today you can't separate children's contact with the adult world today.
When children are very young, you read them books that are positive to help them go to sleep. But there comes a moment when they begin to understand the difficulties of the world. They know there are problems and the books they read should reflect that, not gloss over them.
When I sit down I write very fast... if I haven't finished a book in two or three months then I think it's not going well.
With reading, I was very lucky. I had a mother who read to me, not because she had time - she was a busy woman - but she found 10 minutes to come and sit on my bed with a book.
You get to about 65 or 70 and you lose friends and the world does seem to be an endlessly difficult place and tragic place, so it's more and more difficult for me to find the bright lights.
When I was very little my mother would read to me in bed. She gave me a fascination for stories, and for the music in words.
With all editing, no matter how sensitive - and I've been very lucky here - I react sulkily at first, but then I settle down and get on with it, and a year later I have my book in my hand.