Undaunted Author of ‘War Horse’ Reflects on Unlikely Hit

[groovedaddy]

LONDON — Before it was made into a hit West End play, before it was bound for Broadway, before it was set to be Steven Spielberg’s next big movie, “War Horse” was a slim, powerful children’s book about a young man and his beloved horse on the front lines of World War I.

Published in 1982, the book was a “huge nonevent” at the time, according to its author, Michael Morpurgo; it drew better reviews than his earlier works but relatively little sales. It did get nominated for a big national prize, which it failed to win. Mr. Morpurgo, transported to the ceremony in a limousine, found that the car had mysteriously dematerialized during the evening; he left by subway.
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The book, which has been called a great argument for pacifism, is written from the point of view of Joey the horse. It was inspired, in part, by a series of conversations Mr. Morpurgo had had years ago in his village, Iddesleigh, in Devon, with an elderly man who had served in a cavalry unit in World War I. “He told me with tears in his eyes that the only person he could talk to there — and he called this horse a person — was his horse,” Mr. Morpurgo said.
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Then one evening he was at the farm he and his wife run in Devon, where poor children come to work with animals. (There are now three in Britain, and one in Vermont.) He was passing through the stable yard when he saw one of the children, a troubled boy who had a bad stutter and had not uttered a word in school in two years, standing head to head with a horse. “He started talking,” Mr. Morpurgo recalled. “And he was talking to the horse, and his voice was flowing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/books/michael-morpurgo-author-of-war-horse-an-unlikely-hit.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha28

[rwork]

1. That was beautiful.

Thanks for sharing.

[The Roux Comes First]

2. I Read and Enjoyed War Horse Last September

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