The best-selling author of War Horse has written a new novel set during the First World War.
Michael Morpurgo’s Listen to the Moon will be published on September 25 to coincide with the centenary commemorations of the conflict. The former Children’s Laureate first published War Horse in 1982 and sales of the book soared after the 2007 National Theatre stage show and then the movie adaptation by Steven Spielberg.
Listen to the Moon is set amid the fear and suspicion of May 1915 when Alfie and his fisherman father find an injured girl on an uninhabited island in the Scillies. Locals wonder if the girl — who has no memory of who she is or how she came to be there — is a victim of a German U-boat, a German spy or a mermaid. She says one word, “Lucy”, and loves music and moonlight.
Her story is intertwined with that of another girl, Merry, who boards the Lusitania for a doomed sea voyage.
HarperCollins Children’s Books announced the publication today. Morpurgo, 70, who lives in London and Devon where he set up Farms for City Children, also wrote war-time novel Private Peaceful. He has warned against the 1914-18 commemorations encouraging national pride but has said the men who died and the women who worked hard back home should be honoured: “If any war should make us more determined to be peaceful, it is that war.”
