Michael Morpurgo answers the most frequently asked questions about this book . . .
Where did you get the idea from?
I had a letter from a boy who had read 'The Wreck of the Zanzibar', a story about a girl living on an island. He said he liked the book a lot, but it would have been better if the girl had been a boy, because he preferred stories about boys, and would I please write a story for him about a boy who got 'stuck' on a desert island? So I did.
Where did you find the names you used in the book?
Michael's name: The boy had to be Michael, because I wanted to feel I was inside the story.
Kensuke (the Japanese sailor): at a book signing in a London school, I met a Japanese boy. I asked his name so I could write a dedication I his book. "Kensuke", he said. "Can I borrow your name?" I said, "I want to use it in a book I'm writing." "Yes", he said.
Peggy Sue (the yacht): lying on my bed I was trying, struggling to think up a name for the boat. I'd visited marinas, found nothing I liked. Then I heard a song on the CD player downstairs. It was Buddy Holly, my wife Clare's favourite singer. The song went "Peggy Sue, Peggy Sue. I love you." Perfect I thought.
Stella Artois (the dog): I couldn't dream up a good name for the dog. Then I got lucky. For 25 years my wife and I ran a charity called 'Farms for City Children'. Primary school children from cities and towns all over the country come to live and work with us down on the farm. One evening a new group of children from London arrived. Walking down to the milking parlour on their first evening, our dog Bercelet came with us.
"What's that?" asked one of the boys.
"A dog." I told him.
"What sort of dog?"
"A lurcher." I said.
"What's it called?" he asked.
"Bercelet." I said.
"I've got a dog," he told me.
"What's yours called," I asked.
"Stella Artois," he said.
Bingo.
Is the story true?
Every story I write has some truth in it somewhere. There was a Japanese soldier left behind on an island after the Second World War. He stayed there deliberately all by himself, because he didn't want to believe the war was lost. He was there for nearly 40 years all on his own before he was discovered. And people do sail around the world on yachts, and they do fall off. Orangutans are being slaughtered by hunters who want to kidnap their babies and sell them. Newly hatched turtles do have to make a run for it from the beach into the sea. All I do is take truths, and weave them into a fiction, which has another kind of truth.
Why did you put in that letter at the end of the book?
Because when I finished writing the story, I felt it could be read perhaps just as an adventure story. I wanted it all to ring true, so that the reader might wonder if what he or she had just been reading had in fact really happened. I like to end books with questions, not answers!
Will you write a sequel?
I don't think so. I prefer to keep myself and my readers wondering if Michael ever came back to find Kensuke. |
