My eight year old daughter Millisent has reached an age where she appreciates a good book and has evolved from reading children’s stories to being enthusiastic about fiction and fact. So we’ve made the leap this year to chapter books with older content for which she’s recently started reading Michael Morpurgo’s An Eagle In The Snow.
This novel is the latest release from master storyteller Michael Morpurgo who depicts the plight of one man who might have stopped World War II and it’s inspired by a true story. Set in 1940 a young man finds himself in the trenches of World War I and makes a decision on the spur of the moment which he has to live with forever. It turns out to be his biggest mistake in life and he sets out to put it right before it’s too late.Millisent has had her nose stuck into the book for the past few days now and in the evening we sit and read it together and she fills me in with the bits that she’s already read ahead. Not only is it absolutely captivating but it’s incredibly rich with history and Morpurgo really captures the essence of the era and what the characters are going through at such a difficult time. Millie particularly likes the relationship with animals and the fact that the words are widely spaced with illustrations throughout to break it up. She told me this morning that she doesn’t feel like it’s a heavy book in the sense of pages and pages of never-ending words, and as a result of this she can read it quickly without losing interest or it seeming a chore. Another wonderful hardback from Harper Collins to expand the minds of budding readers.
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