Michael Morpurgo Quotes

When Michael is washed up on an island in the Pacific after falling from his parent’s yacht, the Peggy Sue, he struggles to survive on his own. But he soon realizes there is someone close by, someone who is watching over him and helping him to stay alive.

Morpurgo here spins a yarn which gently captures the adventurous elements one would expect from a desert-island tale, but the real strength lies in the poignant and subtle observations of friendship, trust and, ultimately, humanity.

Being a children’s book, I thought I would love it for the innocence in the writing and the illustrations. But heck, no (again!) I enjoyed it for what it is. Full of adventure, full of Robinson Crusoe vibes.

It is a story about family, pets, animals, the sea and its numerous creatures, an island nestling a forest and its mysterious beings; an old man in his world building it to a kingdom of his own along with the orangutans and the gibbons; men and animals living together; separations and wars.

It is an exciting adventure novel in which a young boy named Michael is swept overboard during a storm while sailing around the world with his family, and left stranded on a desert island with his pet dog.

However, he soon crosses paths with the island’s only other inhabitant: an irascible Japanese man named Kensuke. Despite the many differences between them, Michael and Kensuke soon become fast friends, but both of them will have to choose between their peaceful life on the island and the uncertainty of returning to civilisation…

Kensuke’s Kingdom is a children’s novel in which a young man named Michael tells the story of an adventure he had ten years earlier. Michael and his parents were sailing around the world when a fierce storm swept Michael overboard, and he was left marooned on a desert island with no one for company except his dog, Stella Artois, and a mysterious old man who refused to let him leave.

He was left marooned on a desert island with no one for company except his dog, Stella Artois, and a mysterious old man who refused to let him leave. However, over time the initial animosity between Michael and the elderly Kensuke softened and blossomed into a powerful friendship that would change Michael’s life forever…

“I find this ball. Very soon I tell you everything. Little fish not so good now. Not so many. We need big fish sometimes from deep sea. We smoke fish. Then we have plenty fish to eat. You understand?” The outrigger was a great deal heavier than it looked. I helped Kensuke drag it down the beach and into the sea. “This very good boat” he said, as we lifted Stella in.

“This boat never go down. I make myself. Very safe boat.” He pushed us off and jumped in. I never ceased to be amazed at his extraordinary agility and strength. He rowed with a single oar, standing in the stern of the boat, more as if he was punting. Very soon we were out beyond the shelter of the cave and into the swell of the open sea.

“They’ll look after you—they promised they would. And I need the money, Joey; I need the money bad.”

“Terrified, I knew I could not run, for there was nowhere to go, so I put my back to him, and lashed out behind me. I felt my hooves strike home.”

“Topthorn, I noticed, always shook his head in the water before he started to drink so that alongside him I was showered all over my face and neck with cooling water.”

I knew that once I left [Topthorn] I would be alone in the world again, that I would no longer have his strength and support beside me. So I stayed with him and waited.

“Topthorn and I were hitched up side by side to an old hay cart and [...] driven up through the woods, back toward the thunder of the gunfire and the wounded that awaited us.”

“It was the mud that was killing us one by one—the mud, the lack of shelter, and the lack of food.”

“I stood in a wide corridor of mud, a wasted, shattered landscape, between two vast, unending rolls of barbed wire. [...] This was what the soldiers called “no-man’s-land.”

“When the end of the war did come, it came swiftly. [...] There was little joy, little celebration of victory, only a sense of profound relief.”

“When [Albert’s father] came back into the stable afterward and began to sweet-talk me and held out a bucket of sweet-smelling oats, I was immediately suspicious. But the oats and my own inquisitiveness overcame my better judgment.”

“With Albert riding me, there was no hanging on the reins, no jerking on the bit in my mouth; a gentle squeeze with the knees and a touch with his heels was enough to tell me what he wanted of me. I think he could have ridden even without that, so well did we come to understand each other.”

″[Topthorn] lay where he was, breathing heavily, and lifted his head once to look at me. It was an appeal for help—I could see it in his eyes.”

‘Why The Whales Came’ is a somewhat mysterious, supernatural and mystical thriller evoking so well the atmosphere and feelings of a childhood spent growing up in the Scilly Isles at the time of the First World War.

“By now the force of the storm was spent and the wind had died, but the sea was still seething and angry. The waves rolled into the bay from Samson, gathering and rearing as they neared the shore before they curled over to hurl themselves into the hissing sand.”

“His face was the colour of a well-worn polished brown boot. The skin was creased but still young and suppple-not that you could see much of his face for it was almost entirely hidden by a head and beard of wild white hair.”

“I could hardly have been more wrong. Only the tired stoop of his body and the loose, mottled skin of his forearm betrayed his age.”

“But it was his eyes that marked him out from any other man I had ever seen for they drew you into them somehow so that you could not look away even if you wanted to.”

In this story of wonder and initiation during WWI on a small island group off of the western shores of Great Britain, a boy and a girl learn about rumors in small towns and destroy some demons of their village’s history.

First of all, Gracie doesn’t want to know the Birdman, scared the rumours are true, not only about the Birdman, but about Samson too.

To follow Gracie and Daniel through their adventures is interesting. Daniel is brave and outgoing, whereas Gracie is shy and hidden away. This doesn’t stop her from facing her fears and following her best friend, though.

“The old man standing in front of me was not at all as I had expected him to be. All my life I had thought he would have the predatory look of an ancient crow under the shadow of his sou’wester. ”

Why the Whales came is a tale with mystery, suspense, and echoes of history from World War I. The emotions it encompasses run the gamut from fear, to loss, to anger. Gracie and Daniel, the two main characters, are courageous and in many ways more mature than those around them. Their actions touch the heart.