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    Kensuke's Kingdom
    Kensuke's Kingdom
    Kensuke's Kingdom
    Ebook135 pages1 hour

    Kensuke's Kingdom

    By Michael Morpurgo

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    About this ebook

    Michael Morpurgo’s children’s classic is now a major movie animation that The Sunday Times calls ‘bold, charming and beautiful’ starring Cillian Murphy, Sally Hawkins and Ken Watanabe. With screen play by children’s laureate, Frank Cottrell-Boyce. From the award-winning author of War Horse.

    ‘A dazzling adventure’ – The Times

    ‘I heard the wind above me in the sails. I remember thinking, this is silly, you haven’t got your safety harness on, you haven’t got your lifejacket on. You shouldn’t be doing this … I was in the cold of the sea before I could even open my mouth to scream.’

    Washed up on an island in the Pacific, Michael struggles to survive on his own. With no food and no water, he curls up and closes his eyes ready for the end. When he wakes, there is a plate beside him of fish, of fruit, and a bowl of fresh water. He is not alone …

    Kensuke's Kingdom is a gripping adventure of survival and true friendship from the author of War Horse.

    Michael Morpurgo has written more than one hundred books for children and won the Whitbread Award, the Smarties Award, the Circle of Gold Award, the Children’s Book Award and has been short-listed for the Carnegie Medal four times.

    Kensuke’s Kingdom was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize and won the FCB Award.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateAug 6, 2012
    ISBN9781780312903
    Kensuke's Kingdom
    Author

    Michael Morpurgo

    Sir Michael Morpurgo OBE FRSL FKC DL is a writer, playwright, performer and librettist. The author of more than 150 children’s books, he has sold over 35 million copies worldwide and in almost 40 languages. A former teacher and vocal spokesperson for the benefits of reading for pleasure, he is currently the President of Book Trust. Between 2003–2005 he was Children’s Laureate and in 2018 he was knighted for services to literature and charity. Many of Michael’s books have been adapted for stage and screen, including the phenomenal National Theatre adaptation of War Horse, which has been seen by over 10 million people in over 100 cities around the world, broke the West End record for weekly ticket sales, and won 5 Tony Awards and 2 Olivier Awards. Michael is also the co-founder, with his wife Clare, of the charity Farms for City Children.

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      Book preview

      Kensuke's Kingdom - Michael Morpurgo

      Chapter 1

      Peggy Sue

      I disappeared on the night before my twelfth birthday. July 28 1988. Only now can I at last tell the whole extraordinary story, the true story. Kensuke made me promise that I would say nothing, nothing at all, until at least ten years had passed. It was almost the last thing he said to me. I promised, and because of that I have had to live out a lie. I could let sleeping lies sleep on, but more than ten years have passed now. I have done school, done college, and had time to think. I owe it to my family and to my friends, all of whom I have deceived for so long, to tell the truth about my long disappearance, about how I lived to come back from the dead.

      But there is another reason for speaking out now, a far, far better reason. Kensuke was a great man, a good man, and he was my friend. I want the world to know him as I knew him.

      Until I was nearly eleven, until the letter came, life was just normal. There were the four of us in the house: my mother, my father, me and Stella – Stella Artois, that is, my-one-ear up and one-ear-down black and white sheepdog, who always seemed to know what was about to happen before it did. But even she could not have foreseen how that letter was going to change our lives for ever.

      Thinking back, there was a regularity, a sameness about my early childhood. It was down the road each morning to ‘the monkey school’. My father called it that because he said the children gibbered and screeched and hung upside down on the climbing-frame in the playground. And, anyway, I was always ‘monkey face’ to him – when he was in a playful mood, that is, which he often was. The school was really called St Joseph’s, and I was happy there, for most of the time, anyway. After school everyday, whatever the weather, I’d be off down to the recreation ground for football with Eddie Dodds, my best friend in all the world, and Matt and Bobby and the others. It was muddy down there. Cross the ball and it would just land and stick. We had our own team, the Mudlarks we called ourselves, and we were good, too. Visiting teams seemed to expect the ball to bounce for some reason, and by the time they realised it didn’t, we were often two or three goals up. We weren’t so good away from home.

      Every weekend I did a paper round from Mr Patel’s shop on the corner. I was saving up for a mountain bike. I wanted to go mountain biking up on the moors with Eddie. The trouble was, I would keep spending what I’d saved. I’m still the same that way.

      Sundays were always special, I remember. We’d go dinghy sailing, all of us, on the reservoir, Stella Artois barking her head off at the other boats as if they’d no right to be there. My father loved it, he said, because the air was clear and clean, no brick dust – he worked down at the brickworks. He was a great do-it-yourself fanatic. There was nothing he couldn’t fix, even if it didn’t need fixing. So he was in his element on a boat. My mother, who worked part time in the office at the same brickworks, revelled in it, too. I remember her once, throwing back her head in the wind and breathing in deep as she sat at the tiller. ‘This is it,’ she cried. ‘This is how life is supposed to be. Wonderful, just wonderful.’ She always wore the blue cap. She was the undisputed skipper. If there was a breeze out there, she’d find it and catch it. She had a real nose for it.

      We had some great days on the water. We’d go out when it was rough, when no one else would, and we’d go skimming over the waves, exhilarating in the speed of it, in the sheer joy of it. And if there wasn’t a breath of wind, we didn’t mind that either. Sometimes we’d be the only boat on the whole reservoir. We’d just sit and fish instead – by the way, I was better at fishing than either of them – and Stella Artois would be curled up behind us in the boat, bored with the whole thing, because there was no one to bark at.

      Then the letter arrived. Stella Artois savaged it as it came through the letterbox. There were puncture holes in it and it was damp, but we could read enough. The brickworks were going to close down. They were both being made redundant.

      There was a terrible silence at the breakfast table that morning. After that we never went sailing on Sundays any more. I didn’t have to ask why not. They both tried to find other jobs, but there was nothing.

      A creeping misery came over the house. Sometimes I’d come home and they just wouldn’t be speaking. They’d argue a lot, about little niggly things – and they had never been like that. My father stopped fixing things around the house. He was scarcely ever home anyway. If he wasn’t looking for a job, he’d be down in the pub. When he was home he’d just sit there flicking through endless yachting magazines and saying nothing.

      I tried to stay out of the house and play football as much as I could, but then Eddie moved away because his father had found a job somewhere down south. Football just wasn’t the same without him. The Mudlarks disbanded. Everything was falling apart.

      Then one Saturday I came home from my paper round and found my mother sitting at the bottom of the stairs and crying. She’d always been so strong. I’d never seen her like this before.

      ‘Silly beggar,’ she said. ‘Your dad’s a silly beggar, Michael, that’s what he is.’

      ‘What’s he done?’ I asked her.

      ‘He’s gone off,’ she told me, and I thought she meant for good. ‘He wouldn’t hear reason, oh no. He’s had this idea, he says. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, only that he’s sold the car, that we’re moving south, and he’s going to find us a place.’ I was relieved, and quite pleased, really. South must be nearer to Eddie. She went on: ‘If he thinks I’m leaving this house, then I’m telling you he’s got another think coming.’

      ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘Not much here.’

      ‘Well there’s the house, for a start. Then there’s Gran, and there’s school.’

      ‘There’s other schools,’ I told her. She became steaming angry then, angrier than I’d ever known her.

      ‘You want to know what was the last straw?’ she said. ‘It was you, Michael, you going off on your paper round this morning. You know what your dad said? Well, I’ll tell you, shall I? Do you know something? he says. There’s only one lousy wage coming into this house – Michael’s paper money. How do you think that makes me feel, eh? My son’s eleven years old. He’s got a job, and I haven’t. ’

      She steadied herself for a moment or two before she went on, her eyes filled with fierce tears. ‘I’m not moving, Michael. I was born here. And I’m not going. No matter what he says, I’m not leaving.’

      I was there when the phone call came a week or so later. I knew it was my father. My mother said very little, so I couldn’t understand what was going on, not until she sat me down afterwards and told me.

      ‘He sounds different, Michael. I mean, like his old self, like his very old self, like he used to be when I first knew him. He’s found us a place. Just pack your stuff and come, he says. Fareham. Somewhere near Southampton. Right on the sea, he says. There’s something very different about him, I’m telling you.’

      My father did indeed seem a changed man. He was waiting for us when we got off the train, all bright-eyed again and full of laughter. He helped us with the cases. ‘It’s not far,’ he said, ruffling my hair. ‘You wait till you see it, monkey face. I’ve got it all sorted, the whole thing. And it’s no good you trying to talk me out of it, either of you. I’ve made up my mind.’

      ‘What about?’ I asked him.

      ‘You’ll see,’ he said.

      Stella Artois bounded along ahead of us, her tail held high and happy. We all felt like that, I think.

      In the end we caught a bus because the cases were too heavy. When we got off we were right by the sea. There didn’t seem to be any houses anywhere, just a yachting marina.

      ‘What are we doing here?’ my mother asked.

      ‘There’s someone I want you to meet. A good friend of mine. She’s called Peggy Sue. She’s been looking forward to meeting you. I’ve told her all about you.’

      My mother frowned at me in puzzlement. I wasn’t any the wiser either. All I knew for certain was that he was being deliberately mysterious.

      We struggled on with our suitcases, the gulls crying overhead, the yacht masts clapping around us, and Stella yapping at all of it, until at last he stopped right by a gang plank that led up to a gleaming dark blue yacht. He put the cases down and turned to face us. He was

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