One thing on the New Year’s Honours list was Sir Michael Morpurgo. This is a man who has done so much for Children’s literature, he has brought the love reading and appreciation of History to so many over the years that it was a well-deserved accolade. I still remember that ‘The Wreck of Zanzibar’ was the first Morpurgo book I read, and I have not stopped since.<\/p>\n
I admire writers bringing the classics to a new generation or offering a new perspective of a well-loved tale – it is quite a talent. I admit that I have never read the original ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and I do have a little bit of a fear of the original film (although I do love ‘Wicked’) – however, the beautiful illustrations by Emma Chichester-Clark on the cover and the name of Morpurgo attracted me to this book.<\/p>\n
The story is told from the perspective of Dorothy’s loyal companion Toto. From my knowledge of the original tale (and the skill of Morpurgo) it is faithful to the original and the characters have the same charm. I enjoyed this book from the word go – drawn in by the skill of the storytelling and the beauty of the illustrations. I am now tempted to finally read the original classic tale to have an even better understanding of the story. However, this book is a lovely way to introduce children to a classic novel.<\/p>\n
Have you read any retellings of the classic? Any you would recommend?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One thing on the New Year’s Honours list was Sir Michael Morpurgo. This is a man who has done so much for Children’s literature, he has brought the love reading and appreciation of History to so many over the years that it was a well-deserved accolade. I still remember that ‘The Wreck of Zanzibar’ was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[85,221,113,220,219],"class_list":["post-484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-childrens-fiction","tag-classic-fiction","tag-michael-morpurgo","tag-the-wizard-of-oz","tag-toto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8jrc7-7O","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}