Michael Morpurgo, former Children’s Laureate and the award-winning author of War Horse, has written a beautifully evocative story which celebrates the beauty of a place and the pain it creates when that beauty is under threat. Michael always liked to visit Mrs Pettigrew; her home was an old railway carriage right by the water’s edge in one of the most peaceful places in the world. Everything about the place was peaceful and just so, inside the house and out. But then the threat of a power station loomed. The changes it brings are and the way it impacts on Michael’s life are touchingly charted. Peter Bailey’s illustrations capture the tranquillity of the place and the people perfectly.
A tender, lyrical tale from the author's childhood in an idyllic English village, with environmental and conservational themes.
In this involving tale, master storyteller and former children's laureate Michael Morpurgo revisits the "landscape of his memories", telling of his boyhood fifty years before. The village of Bradwell is a stone's throw from the sea and is peopled by quirky characters such as the three Stebbing sisters, the white moustachioed Colonel Burton and Bennie the village thug. But the heroine of this story is the serene Mrs Pettigrew, who lives in a railway carriage down in the marshes with her dogs, donkey, bees and hens. Industrial reality intrudes when plans are made to build a nuclear power station on the marshes, and when a village battle ensues for and against this environmental hazard, young Michael finds himself caught up in the sad fate of Mrs Pettigrew and the landscape of his boyhood.
