Kids into books: War Horse

Author: Michael Morpurgo

Illustrator: Michael Forman

Age: 8+ years

Publisher: Mammoth, $16.95


My earliest memories are a confusion of hilly fields and dark, damp stables, and rats that scampered along the beams above my head. But I remember well enough the day of the horse sale. The terror of it stayed with me all my life.

I was not yet six months old, a gangling, leggy colt who had never been further than a few feet from his mother. We were parted that day in the terrible hubbub of the auction ring and I was never to see her again.

She was a fine working farm horse, getting on in years but with all the strength and stamina of an Irish Draught horse quite evident in her fore and hind quarters. She was sold within minutes, and before I could follow her through the gates, she was whisked out of the ring and away.

But somehow I was more difficult to dispose of. Perhaps it was the wild look in my eye as I circled the ring in a desperate search for my mother, or perhaps it was none of the farmers and gypsies there were looking for a spindly-looking half-thoroughbred colt.

But whatever the reason they were a long time haggling over how little I was worth before I heard the hammer go down and I was driven out through the gates and into a pen outside.