An Audience with Michael Morpurgo

October 19, 2014

Our Year 7 students are great fans of Michael Morpurgo and were lucky enough to see him either in person at The Milton Rooms in Malton or via live link back at school. Ethan Hawtin was one of the eleven students to go and see this fascinating author in Malton, and has written an account of his experience.

“Why do you set a lot of stories in a war?” – Pippa Brown asks Michael Morpurgo at ‘An Audience with..’

On Monday 13th October eleven lucky Year 7s were able to attend The Milton rooms in Malton in an audience with Michael Morpurgo. They were selected because they won a competition in school by writing a letter to the teachers about why they should be one of eleven people to meet Michael Morpurgo. I was one of the winners.

After traveling to Malton on the Ryedale minibus, we filed into The Milton rooms and took our seats in the audience. Around fifteen minutes later, Michael came on and everyone started clapping and cheering. It was amazing to see the author, who has written some of my favourite books. It felt like a once-in-a lifetime experience.

School children in the audience were asking him questions and he had lots of very interesting and funny answers to tell us. One of the answers was that you shouldn’t plan a story too carefully because then people can “read your mind and guess the ending easily.” This was surprising because my teachers have been telling me to plan for years! I found all of his answers very interesting.

To conclude, I really enjoyed the experience and I found all of his answers very inspiring for my English work. I can’t wait to read his new book, Listen to the Moon.

You can find out more about Michael Morpurgo by visiting his website, and if you’re interested in finding out a bit of background information behind Private Peaceful, the book Year 7 have been studying this term, then you might like this brief YouTube video.