Little Foxes

by Michael Morpurgo

Overview

A spellbinding animal story from War Horse author and former Children's Laureate, Michael Morpurgo.

Bullied at school, nagged in Aunty May's tenth-floor council flat, there's only one place ten-year-old Billy really feels alive – in the wilderness by the canal. There he watches a cygnet on the water and protects a family of fox cubs. Then his secret place is discovered and the fox family decimated. Unwanted and unloved, Billy and the last fox run for their lives …

A gripping and poignant animal adventure from the master storyteller of An Eagle in the Snow, Listen to the Moon, Shadow, and An Elephant in the Garden. 

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 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780311760
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	01/02/2012
Sold by:	HarperCollins Publishers
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	434,632
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	8 - 9 Years

About the Author

Michael Morpurgo is one of the most successful children's authors in the country, loved by children, teachers and parents alike. He 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.

He 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 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.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 4-6 Abandoned at birth, Billy Bunch, now ten, has lived in a string of foster homes. He stutters, does poorly in school, and has no friends, finding consolation in an abandoned churchyard and its environs where he watches birds and other wildlife. It is here that he rescues a deux ex machina in swan shape from some vicious boys, and is miraculously cured of his stutter. He also finds a family of foxes, and when the vixen is run over, Billy rescues one of the cubs and runs away with it (aided and abetted here and there by the d.e.m.). Ultimately, Billy finds a home and a family, the fox returns to the wild, and the d.e.m., ``her mission accomplished at last,'' heads for the swannery. This is overwritten in spots and has other weaknesses to boot (Billy, portrayed as a keen nature observer, fails to notice the swan's bright red leg band for months). As it stands, this plot is too contrived to be convincing. Patricia Manning, Eastchester Public Library, N.Y.

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

Bill Wallis’s calm, elegant reading is perfect to tell the story of foster child Billy Bunch. A smiling infant when he was deserted at a police station, he soon turns into a sullen, unattractive child. Billy stutters in school but can sit silently still while watching a wild cygnet. When the cygnet sheds a gray feather, Billy picks it up—in that moment he discovers his love for the wilderness behind his foster home. Wallis’s soothing voice tracks Billy’s attachment to a fox, which sends him fleeing from his unhappy living situation. His gentle tones follow Billy’s path until he finds a place where he belongs—with people who need him as much as he needs a loving home. S.W. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

JUN/JUL 07 - AudioFile