A Medal for Leroy

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Michael is visiting his two aunt's, Auntie Pish and Auntie Snowdrop. They live together and are sisters. Auntie Pish is the one in charge, whilst Auntie Snowdrop does what she says. You wouldn't think Auntie Snowdrop has the secret she has, but before she can tell Michael the secret that will change his life forever, she dies. Michael is overcome with grief. Auntie Snowdrop was like a second mother to him. Before she died, she said to Michael that soon he would receive a parcel. Michael waits for days, weeks, months, years, but nothing comes. So by the time the mysterious parcel does come, Michael has completely forgotten about it.

A Medal for Leroy by Michael Morpurgo | Goodreads

Morpurgo is a virtuoso at conjuring vibrant stories that draw on historical events. - The Observer Review The image of a happy, conventional family belied the reality of a post-war divorce that had been brushed under the carpet, whilst Michael and his brother grew up without knowing their real father. As Michael reads through his Auntie Snowdrop's words, he discovers a deep secret: he is not who he thinks he is. I read this book for pure nostalgia as this was one of my son's favourite writers as a child. I have so many fond memories of browsing bookshop shelves with my son for the latest Morpurgo novels to take home and read together. A writer that brings history and people to life and who ensures the past will not be forgotten by the younger generation. A writer that doesn't sugar coat the facts when it comes to war and its injustices for his young audiences and yet manages to reveal just enough information appropriate for the age group he is writing for.

A moving story, and sad - I was on the edge of tears at points - but flowing from loss and injustice come gain, something of worth, understanding, and an affirmation of our humanity. As ever, Morpurgo's warmth and humanity suffuse a story of courage, love and hope. - Amanda Craig, The Times

A MEDAL FOR LEROY Read Online Free Without Download - PDF A MEDAL FOR LEROY Read Online Free Without Download - PDF

However, Michael yearns to learn more. He and his French mother regularly pay visits to Roy’s so-called Auntie Pish and Auntie Snowdrop, two sisters who are believed to have adopted Roy as a baby after his own mother was killed in a Zeppelin air raid during the First World War. For more information about the work of Farms for City Children, please visit www.farmsforcitychildren.org I intentionally did not reveal the ending, as I believe to fully enjoy this book it is best read from the start. I highly recommend.As Michael read her words, he discovered who his grandfather, his father, and his Auntie really were and how they were connected to each other. And what this all means to him. It was all a family secret that was never even shared with his mother. His grandfather had served in World War I, and had died saving the lives of other men on the battlefield, but even though he should have gotten a posthumous medal for his bravery, he was never awarded one. Michael Morpurgo’s new novel, A Medal for Leroy, is one that draws on inspiration from the fate of a real-life war hero, but a few family skeletons also inform the author’s moving tale of loss and uncertain identity. When Michael was 13, five years after his Auntie's death, he was given Jasper to take care of when Auntie Pish couldn't do it anymore. Eventually she went into a nursing home and, about five years after the death of her sister, she gave Michael the parcel that was meant for him.

A Medal for Leroy – HarperCollins Publishers UK

Morpurgo writes about war as it affects good, ordinary people, in this case both the First and Second World Wars; war as the cruel thief, robbing said people - of so much, and most especially of each other.Tull’s failure to receive a well-deserved Military Cross in honour of his World War One heroics appealed to Michael’s fondness for representing injustice in his writing, and the ‘medal’ becomes an important motif for the soldier Leroy’s forgotten bravery in the novel. All Maman had told me was that my father was called Roy, that he had been in the RAF, a Spitfire pilot, a flight lieutenant, and that he had been shot down over the English Channel in the summer of 1940. They had only been married for six months—six months, two weeks, and one day—she was always very precise about it when I asked about Papa. He'd been adopted as a baby by his twin aunties, after their sister, his mother, had been killed in a zeppelin raid on London. So he'd grown up with his aunties by the sea in Folkestone in Kent, and gone to school there. He was twenty-one when he died, she said. Tull’s exceptional talent for football and his cool gallantry in battle are recognisable qualities in the character of Leroy. Maman was French, and spoke English as if it was French, with lots of hand waving, conducting her words with her hands, her voice as full of expression as her eyes. We spoke mostly French at home—she insisted on it, so that I could grow up "dreaming in both languages" as she put it, which I could and still do; but that was why her English accent never improved. At the school gates when she came to fetch me, I'd feel proud of her Frenchness. With her short dark hair and olive brown skin and her accent, she neither looked nor sounded like the other mothers. We had a book at school on great heroes and heroines, and Maman looked just like Joan of Arc in that book, only a bit older.

A Medal for Leroy Teaching Resources - Michael Morpurgo A Medal for Leroy Teaching Resources - Michael Morpurgo

Although sometimes he feels different from his friends and wishes he had a Dad, Michael can not feel sad about losing him. You can't blame him though, he never even met his father, to Michael he is just a picture. Although he does not miss him, he loves his medal that his father won for courage in the war. Auntie Snowdrop keeps it with her and polishes it regularly, very different from how Auntie Pish would treat it.

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Explore our full range of Michael Morpurgo resources here! What is Michael Morpurgo’s A Medal for Leroy about? And I think it's true that many of us certainly me, are fascinated to discover more about the lives of our parents and grandparents and even out great-grandparents, because like it or not, they make us who we are" Michael Morpurgo has thrilled and delighted huge numbers of young readers since becoming a children’s author in the early 1970s," Wood said. "Action for Children’s Arts is delighted to recognise Michael’s outstanding contribution by presenting him with the J M Barrie Award 2016. His work will undoubtedly, like Peter Pan, stand the test of time, making him a truly worthy recipient of this award." Morpurgo added: “Storymakers and storytellers like Barrie, and like all the previous winners of this award, have given us the hope and faith children need, we need, to keep flying, have sustained us through dark and troubled times, have banished doubt. To touch the lives of children, to witness their listening and reading silence, is reward enough in itself. This is simply the icing on the cake.”