Such Stuff

Such Stuff (also on loan from Suzanne, thank you) is a new, improved and expanded version of Singing For Mrs Pettigrew, and it's the book that I first saw in a library on a school visit. Some of the stories are the same, but most are at least expanded, if not entirely new, and there have also been added some historical notes to supply the facts behind the inspiration.

I forgot to note when I wrote about Mrs Pettigrew, around the same time as I was reading Strangers at the Farm School, that Michael Morpurgo and his wife have actually run their own version of a farm school for many years! It's not a full time residential school, but more like a camp where students come to stay and experience farm life for a week at a time -- but still, pretty close.

Micheal Morpurgo describes himself as a story-teller, and in this book he gives a wonderful insight into the creative process, the way that fragments of ideas drift around the mind, click and connect, strike sparks off each other, or just sink and ferment sometimes for years before suddenly flowering into story. He excels at building stories, slotting layers of plot and character together. But for me, he is less gifted at voice and style -- as I read the various stories and novel extracts in Such Stuff, they all sounded as if they could have been written by the same person, whether the tale was told by a horse or a shipwrecked little girl or Morpurgo's alter ego when young. (I hasten to add, I know I'm guilty of the same fault myself, which is probably why I'm so acutely aware of it.) Nonetheless, Morpurgo is a master craftsman and he has amassed a body of work that he should be very proud of.