'Writing is not just for clever dicks," insists the man in the red jacket to the amusement of a room full of primary school children at Portadown Library. All eyes follow the children's author Michael Morpurgo as he walks around, waving his hands about, his voice sometimes stern his eyes always smiling. He tells his audience that if they want to write they should draw from everyday experiences and not to think about it as writing but as "speaking through their pencil". After all, once upon a time his own failure to shine at spelling saw his English teacher make him feel "very, very stupid"; "I want you to walk out of this room thinking, 'if he can do it, anyone can' ".
Morpurgo has written over 60 books for children, since he left teaching 30 years ago. He doesn't come across as a "clever dick" but, having won numerous awards for titles such as Kensuke's Kingdom, The Wreck of the Zanzibar and Why the Whales Came, he has proved he is no slouch when it comes to crafting gripping stories for children.
His visit is a major coup for Portadown Library. Librarian Adeen D'Arcy is clearly thrilled. "We have hardly any funds and we couldn't believe it when Michael agreed to waive his fee to come here."
With his wife Clare, Micheal Morpurgo runs the educational charity, Farms for City Children, which gives thousands of children the chance to live and work on their farm in the Devon countryside in England. The country theme provided the perfect backdrop for Out of the Ashes, Morpurgo's recent offering reviewed elsewhere on this page. The book, written in diary form, is one young girl's harrowing account of the time foot and mouth disease was found on her family farm. "I was supposed to be writing a horror story," he tells the children. "But I looked out the window, and saw the smoke from the fires where animals were being burnt and realised that was the horror story I should be writing." Out of the Ashes was written for his publishers, Macmillan, in 10 days last March and recently made into a television programme for the BBC. Later at lunch, Morpurgo explores one of his favourite topics which can be roughly summed up as "the dismissal of children's literature by folk who think it is not as important as the grown up stuff".
"In England adult literature is reviewed because it is interesting in itself. With children's literature, if they do get reviewed, the books have to be somewhat extraordinary in the sense of being topical like Out of the Ashes or sell in phenomenal numbers like Harry Potter. That is so patronising to the whole world of children's books, they should be reviewed on their literary merit," he says.
If Tolkien was writing now, he suggests, warming to his theme, would he be up for the Booker Prize? "No, absolutely not, because someone would say what's The Hobbit got to do with literature? We are told to put away childish things, the very fact that we use the word childish as a pejorative indicates how we think, "he says. "It is a thing to battle against and it is a battle worth fighting."
Still, Morpurgo is happy to be writing books in what he labels a "golden age" for children's literature. The creator of the Children's Laureate position with poet Ted Hughes, he points to J.K. Rowling and other "phenomenal writers" who are producing books that manage to cross over and convince adults that they can enjoy books written for children too. "The notion of children queuing up to buy books is wonderful," he says. His own all-time favourite novel is Robert Louis Stephenson's Treasure Island.
Earlier, in Portadown Library, Morpurgo read a short story set in war-torn Bosnia, where a whole village is taken away by troops except for one girl who lives to tell the tale. The audience of children from Catholic and Protestant schools were, as Morpurgo puts it, "frozen into silence" very quickly, as they recognised undertones of their own experiences in the writer's words.
"I am absolutely convinced that we patronise children at our peril," he says. His own books don't shy away from family tensions or real life tragedies. "You cannot dodge and weave with children, but books should not be primarily issue driven because then they become like a political pamphlet."
Many of his books have a historical context, his next Toro! Toro! is set during the Spanish Civil War and, like all his stories, was handwritten in his bed. He recalls the time when one of his books, War Horse, was up for the Whitbread Book Award and the chairman of the judging panel, Roald Dahl, took him aside to explain that he book didn't win because "children don't like history". "But I know that not to be true," says Morpurgo.
During a question and answer session at the library, one girl asked whether Morpurgo had a happy childhood. It fazed him for a moment, but he said it was sometimes happy, sometimes sad. Like many of his generation in England, he was packed away to boarding school at an early age. His mother, an actress, was divorced from his father when Morpurgo was just a toddler. His father is now an octogenarian who still treads the boards in Canada. He first saw his father on a television screen - he was playing Magwitch in Great Expectations. ("I was 19 and my mother said 'Oh My God! that's your father ' ".)
His mother was remarried to the man who gave Morpurgo his name which has Jewish origins. But she was an unhappy woman, he says, who died through alcohol related illness; "I had this rather strange upbringing, my mother still haunts me a bit, it leaves scars. It is hideous but it happens and you live through them".
A grandfather several times over now, his own experience has helped him understand what young people from broken families go through and the effects it can have on them. Does he like children? "Some of 'em," he replies. "What I like is that by and large there is no bullshit with them, you get what they feel, they say what they think which is very refreshing. I like their spontaneity and their freshness and they help me stay young".
Farms for City Children website is at www.farmsforcitychildren.co.uk