Kids into books - Kensuke’s Kingdom

This weeks title: Kensuke's Kingdom

Author: Michael Morpurgo

Illustrator: Michael Foreman

Age Group: 10-12 years


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 Dobbs, my best friend in all the world, and Matt 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 realise it didn't, we were often two or three goals up. We weren't so good away from home.