Michael Mopurgo, author of War Horse, recalls some favourite books from his childhood.
Michael Morpurgo has returned to
the topic of World War One in his new novel, A Medal For Leroy. Photo: ANDREW
CROWLEY
As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short. (Not
sure I’ve changed that much!) So when it came to stories I liked them heavily
illustrated or short, or both. They had to rattle along briskly and be filled
with excitement and adventure. I loved the way pictures and words would fuse and
resonate in my head long after the story was over.
I’m sure the stories my mother read to me at bedtime were the most formative.
She loved Kipling’s Just So Stories in particular and I learnt to love the tune,
rhythm and fun of them. Oscar Wilde’s short stories “The Selfish Giant” and “The
Happy Prince” were also firm favourites of hers, and I have loved them ever
since. And she’d often read the stories of Hans Christian Andersen, especially
The Little Match Girl. I found it too sad altogether, I remember, and never
wanted to hear it again. (I can just about cope with it now!)
Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes tickled me pink, but I never realised how good it was until I grew up and understood more about human frailty, idiocy and hypocrisy. Mr Aesop I loved too, again not realising at the time that these were anything but animal stories. It was years until I realised they were about us!
Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes tickled me pink, but I never realised how good it was until I grew up and understood more about human frailty, idiocy and hypocrisy. Mr Aesop I loved too, again not realising at the time that these were anything but animal stories. It was years until I realised they were about us!
Poems were short too, so I loved them as well. Narrative poems, like William
Cowper’s “John Gilpin”, W S Gilbert’s “The Yarn of the Nancy Bell”, and of
course Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. Poems by Lear, Kipling
(again), De la Mare, Wordsworth and Shakespeare – all from a collection called
Come Hither – still echo in my head even now.
So reading, and being read to, was a sheer joy for me in those early days.
But when I first went unwillingly to school, to St Matthias in the Warwick Road,
stories were at once hijacked by teachers, who simply wanted to use them for
punctuation, spelling and comprehension lessons. The magic of words, the music
in them and the fun, died.
I took to reading comics where there were fewer words, where action was fast
and furious, funny and fantastical. I read The Beano and The Dandy and the Eagle
avidly. And I read the great classics in picture form in a series called
Classics Illustrated. Books printed with words became alarming to me, all except
for Enid Blyton’s Famous Five novels, maybe because they were forbidden –
probably because they were thought to be too easily enjoyable, and that was
true. They rollicked along, practically turning the page for me.
Then, at about nine or 10, I picked up Treasure Island and read it again and
again. There were enough illustrations to keep me happy, but it was the writing
that held my attention. Stevenson’s words could evoke time and place and people
so well that I felt myself living the story. I was Jim Hawkins on the deck of
The Hispaniola, hiding in the apple barrel, overhearing the dastardly Long John
Silver’s plans for mutiny and murder. Robert Louis Stevenson has been my
hero-writer ever since. Poet, travel writer, children’s writer, novelist – RLS
was a towering genius, and a good man too.
