The White Horse of Zennor

by Michael Morpurgo

Overview

A thrilling collection of myths, legends and ghost stories from War Horse author and former Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo.

Since the beginning of time, strange and mysterious things have happened here … At the furthest edge of Britain, where the sea gently washes over the land and myths brush against reality, lies Zennor. Set in a church town where men become beats and ghosts roam freely, these are haunting and unforgettable tales where magic lies around every corner.

Morpurgo is the master storyteller of such modern classic children's books as An Eagle in the Snow, Listen to the Moon, Private Peaceful, and An Elephant in the Garden. He has written more than one hundred books for children and won the Whitbread Award, the Smarties Award, the Circle of Gold Award, the Children’s Book Award and has been short-listed for the Carnegie Medal four times.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780310626
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	10/03/2011
Sold by:	HarperCollins Publishers
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	10 - 13 Years

About the Author

Former Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo needs no introduction. He is one of the most successful children's authors in the country, loved by children, teachers and parents alike. Michael has written more than forty books for children including the global hit War Horse, which was made into a Hollywood film by Steven Spielberg in 2011.

Several of his other stories have been adapted for screen and stage, including My Friend Walter, Why the Whales Came and Kensuke's Kingdom. Michael has won the Whitbread Award, the Smarties Award, the Circle of Gold Award, the Children's Book Award and has been short-listed for the Carnegie Medal four times. He started the charity Farms for City Children in 1976 with his wife, Clare, aimed at relieving the “poverty of experience… many young children feel in inner city and urban areas. Michael is also a patron of over a dozen other charities. Living in Devon, listening to Mozart and working with children have provided Michael with the ideas and incentive to write his stories.

He spends half his life mucking out sheds with the children, feeding sheep or milking cows; the other half he spends dreaming up and writing stories for children. "For me, the greater part of writing is daydreaming, dreaming the dream of my story until it hatches out – the writing down of it I always find hard. But I love finishing it, then holding the book in my hand and sharing my dream with my readers." Michael received an OBE in December 2006 for his services to literature.

Michael Morpurgo OBE is one of Britain's best loved writers for children, with sales of over 35 million copies. He has written over 150 books, has served as Children’s Laureate, and has won many prizes, including the Smarties Prize, the Writers Guild Award, the Whitbread Award, the Blue Peter Book Award and the Eleanor Farjeon Lifetime Achievement Award. With his wife, Clare, he is the co-founder of Farms for City Children. Michael was knighted in 2018 for services to literature and charity.

Table of Contents

	The Giant's Necklace	1
	The White Horse of Zennor	31
	'Gone to Sea'	63
	Milk for the Cat	90
	Mad Miss Marney	117

Editorial Reviews

Gr 5-7 Set in contemporary Cornwall, these short stories have an old-fashioned flavor of sentimental pathos. All are more of less tinged with the occult. Two involve Knockers, the little folk who bring luck to farmers; one is about a determined child who makes her way home through a storm only to find that her grieving family cannot see her ghost. In another, an ostracized boy with a twisted foot swims off to live with the seals. These tales portray a world in which kindness is a rare virtue, and good ends are sometimes achieved by dubious means: the Knockers use something very like blackmail to persuade farmer Barbery to respect his land, and the child Kate relies on a rather deceitful capitalist venture to help Miss Marney , a witchy recluse. The characters seem remote, and the dialogue is unconvincing. Children will be better served by real Cornish folk tales or by Eleanor Farjeon's longer and more sophisticated Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (Lippincott, 1961; o.p. ) . Gale Eaton, formerly at Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Mass.

School Library Journal

Praise for Michael Morpurgo:

“Michael Morpurgo writes brilliantly about war and animals, conveying the big emotions without preaching.” Guardian

“Champagne quality over a wide range of subjects.” Daily Telegraph

“There are few children’s writers as compelling as Michael Morpurgo.” Daily Express

“Morpurgo, as always, is subtle and skillful, and incorporates social and moral issues into his writing without being self-righteous or detracting from the quality of the narrative” Elizabeth Reilly, British Council

“The former children's laureate has the happy knack of speaking to both child and adult readers.” Guardian

From the Publisher