Michael has no father, brothers, or sisters. Just his mother, Maman, and two aunts: Auntie Pish and Auntie Snowdrop. It is 1940s London and right after the war. Michael’s friends call him “Poodle” because of his frizzy hair and French ancestry. But Michael doesn’t mind much. In fact, he likes being different, being special. Regarding his father, Michael knows only what his mother has told him: his father’s name was Roy, he was a Spitfire pilot, and he was killed in the war. But when Michael’s aunt passes away, she leaves behind a clue that will not only shed light on his past, but also finally reveal who he is. The image of a happy, conventional family belied the reality of a post-war divorce that had been brushed under the carpet, whilst Michael and his brother grew up without knowing their real father. Explore our full range of Michael Morpurgo resources here! What is Michael Morpurgo’s A Medal for Leroy about?

A Medal for Leroy - Macmillan A Medal for Leroy - Macmillan

Some nights when I was little, I'd hear Maman crying herself to sleep in her room. I used to go to her bed then and crawl in with her. She'd hold me tight and say nothing. Sometimes at moments like that I felt she really wanted to tell me more about him, and I longed to ask, but I knew that to ask would be to intrude on her grief and maybe make it worse for her. Time and again I'd let the moment pass. I'd try asking her another time, but whenever I did, she'd look away, clam up, or simply change the subject—she was very good at changing the subject. I didn't understand then that her loss was still too sharp, her memories too fresh, or that maybe she was just trying to keep her pain to herself, to protect me, perhaps, so as not to upset me. I only knew that I wanted to know more about him, and she wouldn't tell me. It is a few years after the war has ended and young Michael (not the author) is growing up in London, living with his French mother Christine. All he knows about his father is that his name was Roy, he was in the RAF during the war, flying a Spitfire and he had been shot down over the English Channel. Michael is visiting his two aunt's, Auntie Pish and Auntie Snowdrop. They live together and are sisters. Auntie Pish is the one in charge, whilst Auntie Snowdrop does what she says. You wouldn't think Auntie Snowdrop has the secret she has, but before she can tell Michael the secret that will change his life forever, she dies. Michael is overcome with grief. Auntie Snowdrop was like a second mother to him. Before she died, she said to Michael that soon he would receive a parcel. Michael waits for days, weeks, months, years, but nothing comes. So by the time the mysterious parcel does come, Michael has completely forgotten about it. And I think it's true that many of us certainly me, are fascinated to discover more about the lives of our parents and grandparents and even out great-grandparents, because like it or not, they make us who we are"Morpurgo is a virtuoso at conjuring vibrant stories that draw on historical events. - The Observer Review As such, historical inspiration and personal experience combine to produce this masterful account of love, loss and exorcising the family ghost. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2018-08-26 06:06:29 Associated-names Foreman, Michael, 1938- Bookplateleaf 0010 Boxid IA1342711 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set china External-identifier Rejected by her parents, the pregnant woman and her fraternal twin set up housekeeping on their own, struggling to make ends meet and claiming the baby is adopted. It is a fiction the sisters are able to maintain their entire lives. Their grandson discovers the truth accidentally, in a hand-written account that is cleverly hidden behind a photograph of his father, the "adopted" son. Now all the family secrets are in the open, and the youngster must deal with the fall-out.

A Medal for Leroy - Michael Morpurgo

The visits were always the same, time after time, but one day, as Michael was coming out of school, he saw his mother waiting for him and knew something was wrong. She told him that his Auntie Snowdrop had passed away. At the funeral, his Auntie Pish told him there was a parcel from Auntie Snowdrop for him and she was post it to him right away. However, Michael yearns to learn more. He and his French mother regularly pay visits to Roy’s so-called Auntie Pish and Auntie Snowdrop, two sisters who are believed to have adopted Roy as a baby after his own mother was killed in a Zeppelin air raid during the First World War.Michael's books have been translated into many languages including Chinese, Bulgarian and Hungarian, Hebrew and Japanese. He travels all over the UK and abroad talking to people of all ages at literary festivals, telling his stories and encouraging them to tell theirs. Maman was French, and spoke English as if it was French, with lots of hand waving, conducting her words with her hands, her voice as full of expression as her eyes. We spoke mostly French at home—she insisted on it, so that I could grow up "dreaming in both languages" as she put it, which I could and still do; but that was why her English accent never improved. At the school gates when she came to fetch me, I'd feel proud of her Frenchness. With her short dark hair and olive brown skin and her accent, she neither looked nor sounded like the other mothers. We had a book at school on great heroes and heroines, and Maman looked just like Joan of Arc in that book, only a bit older.

A MEDAL FOR LEROY Read Online Free Without Download - PDF A MEDAL FOR LEROY Read Online Free Without Download - PDF

David Wood, chair of Action for Children’s Arts, said Morpurgo is “one of our greatest storytellers”. Morpurgo added: “Storymakers and storytellers like Barrie, and like all the previous winners of this award, have given us the hope and faith children need, we need, to keep flying, have sustained us through dark and troubled times, have banished doubt. To touch the lives of children, to witness their listening and reading silence, is reward enough in itself. This is simply the icing on the cake.” That's just about all I knew, all she would tell me, anyway. No matter how much I asked, and I did, and more often as I grew up, she would say little more about him. I know now how painful it must have been for her to talk of him, but at the time I remember feeling very upset, angry almost toward her. He was my father, after all, wasn't he? It felt to me as if she was keeping him all for herself. Occasionally after a soccer match, or when I'd run down to the corner shop on an errand for old Ma Merritt who lived next door to us, Maman might say something like: "Your papa would have been so proud of you. I so wish he'd known you." But never anything more, nothing about him, nothing that helped me to imagine what sort of a man he might have been. Secrets in families are often but they're so much better to hear face to face. Auntie Pish and Auntie Snowdrop really were hard as nails and so it seems was Maman, I loved that Leroy made Martha so happy and that in such a grey world they managed to find a little bit of happiness that went on for Martha for almost 20 years. A moving story, and sad - I was on the edge of tears at points - but flowing from loss and injustice come gain, something of worth, understanding, and an affirmation of our humanity.

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Michael Morpurgo award winning British children's writer and author of War Horse and. Private Peaceful