Michael Morpurgo Quotes About Children
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There is the myth that writing books for children is easier than writing books for grownups, whereas we know that truly great books for children are works of genius, whether it's 'Alice in Wonderland' or the 'Gruffalo' or 'Northern Lights.' When it's a great book, it's a great book, whether it's for children or not.
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Elephants are my favourite creatures and have been since I was a boy and my mother read Kipling's The Elephant's Child to me. It was loving elephants so much that made we want to write my own story with an elephant at the centre and its bond with a child.
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As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short.
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I was never a great reader, but there were two stories I loved best: Kipling's The Elephant's Child and The Jungle Book. Deep down, I've always wanted to write a book about a wild child and an elephant.
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Theatre can transform a child's life, just as an early cultural experience whether with opera, ballet, music or art is a wonderful thing because it opens the door to a life-long experience, a life-long enjoyment.
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Our great problem, is that children now know whatever they want to know - at the press of a button they can discover all horrors of the adult world. They know very early on that the world is sometimes a very dark, difficult and complex place, and the literature they read must reflect that. Otherwise we're just entertaining them to pass the time.
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Anything that gets children reading is fine.
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It is the child's understanding that teaches the adults the way of the future. They're still doing it today with modern technology.
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Animals are sentient, intelligent, perceptive, funny and entertaining. We owe them a duty of care as we do to children.
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A lot of children, like I did, move away from words because of the fear - which is something you have to take out of education: the fear of worrying about what marks you'll get, detention, worrying about letting people down, your parents, teachers.
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Access to books and the encouragement of the habit of reading: these two things are the first and most necessary steps in education and librarians, teachers and parents all over the country know it. It is our children's right and it is also our best hope and their best hope for the future.
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Perhaps it is partly that we need to love books ourselves as parents, grandparents and teachers in order to pass on that passion for stories to our children. It's not about testing and reading schemes, but about loving stories and passing on that passion to our children.
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Children have to be motivated to want to learn to read. Reading must not be taught simply as a school exercise.
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