This Morning I Met Whale - Michael Morpurgo

[rickymummy]

My 7 year old (Year 2) had this as his school reading book last night. He is normally a big fan of Roald Dahl, Jeremy Strong, Horrid Henry etc, but he was persuaded to give it a go by his teacher.

He read it, wouldn't put it down, but then afterwards said it "wasn't his sort of thing".

I read it after he'd gone to bed and I wept buckets! Brilliant story.

What I'm wondering is, is this a book that children enjoy, or is it the sort of thing that adults think children should enjoy? I'm not sure whether DS is too young for it, emotionally, and will "get" it later?

dd, 7 y (year 3), seems to genuinely like all of Morpurgo's books...

Michael Morpurgo is my favourite children's author - fantastic and diverse stories. Superb and accessible writing. However, I would say Why The Whales Came is for older children (Y4/5). Just because a child can decode a text, it doesn't mean they have the emotional intelligence or life experience to truly understand it. I have this issue with my DD (Y2, 6yrs), she is an enthusiastic and very competent reader but I have to be careful about the books she reads, the content of some books are just too old for her. There are so many books on the market for reluctant readers (high interest, low age) but there aren't many for the fluent young readers.