by Michael MorpurgoCandlewick Press
Michael Morpurgo is also a teller of stories and it’s easy to see why he held the post of Children’s Laureate in Britain from 2003 to 2005. The stories in Singing for Mrs Pettigrew speak directly to his chosen audience - children. He revels in the chance “to rediscover and indulge in that delightful and necessary conspiracy in which I suspend all the trials and tribulations I have come to know and share with them for a while the wondrous worlds of . . . Winnie-the-Pooh and Peter Rabbit.” But whether it be stories for the young and the young at heart or stories of travel and musings, his understanding of the world and of people delightfully entertains.
Singing for Mrs Pettigrew is a collection of stories and essays, interspersed together to make a book of thoughtful book for both children and adults. His essays are sometimes travelogues as he wanders the English countryside, sometimes informative as he tells of Farms for City Children, a hugely successful venture which has given sixty thousand children a farm experience “harvesting, mucking out, feeding sheep and pigs and calves”, and sometimes instructional as he talks about his life as a writer.
Pen and ink sketches by Peter Bailey scatter through the pages, illuminating stories and essays alike. I looked for a favourite, but found many. My One and Only Great Escape tells of a young Morpurgo, at boarding school and desperately homesick, making a break for it. The illustration alone is worth several pages! There is Yannick, a small boy sent to France for the summer holidays, who learns how to make crème brûlé for Picasso. And there are whales and ghosts, unicorns and giants.
Morpurgo does not shirk from difficult subjects. The Giant’s Necklace is the story of Cherry, a young girl who becomes cut off by the tide while collecting shells. Her struggle to climb above the rising sea and her encounter with the ghosts of miners long gone gently lead the reader toward an inevitable conclusion. Masterfully done!
Singing for Mrs Pettigrew is a curl up and read aloud book, or a quiet, easy read-in-a-corner book for all ages. And it loudly speaks to the writers in us all. “Don’t pretend,” writes Morpurgo. “Tell your tale. Speak with your own voice. We are what we write, I think, even more than we are what we read.”
Michael Morpurgo was the Children’s Laureate of Britain from 2003 to 2005 and has written more than 100 books. He lives in Devon, England.
