A Medal for Leroy

Product Information

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.

A Medal for Leroy by Michael Morpurgo (9780007339686 A Medal for Leroy by Michael Morpurgo (9780007339686

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. As ever, Morpurgo's warmth and humanity suffuse a story of courage, love and hope. - Amanda Craig, The Times

Curriculum

Michael has no father, brothers, or sisters. Just his mother, Maman, and two aunts: Auntie Pish and Auntie Snowdrop. It is 1940s London and right after the war. Michael’s friends call him “Poodle” because of his frizzy hair and French ancestry. But Michael doesn’t mind much. In fact, he likes being different, being special. Regarding his father, Michael knows only what his mother has told him: his father’s name was Roy, he was a Spitfire pilot, and he was killed in the war. But when Michael’s aunt passes away, she leaves behind a clue that will not only shed light on his past, but also finally reveal who he is. Rejected by her parents, the pregnant woman and her fraternal twin set up housekeeping on their own, struggling to make ends meet and claiming the baby is adopted. It is a fiction the sisters are able to maintain their entire lives. Their grandson discovers the truth accidentally, in a hand-written account that is cleverly hidden behind a photograph of his father, the "adopted" son. Now all the family secrets are in the open, and the youngster must deal with the fall-out.

Medal for Leroy - Guided Reading planning | Teaching Resources Medal for Leroy - Guided Reading planning | Teaching Resources

Michael Morpurgo award winning British children's writer and author of War Horse and. Private PeacefulSomehow it had gotten around the school, and all down the street, about my father—I don't know how, because I never said anything. Everyone seemed to know why Maman was always alone—and not just at the school gates, but at Nativity plays at Christmastime, at soccer matches. It was common knowledge in school and down our street, that my father had been killed in the war. Whenever the war was spoken of around me—and it was spoken of often when I was growing up—voices would drop to a respectful, almost reverential whisper, and people would look at me sideways, admiringly, sympathetically, enviously even. I didn't know much more about my father than they did. But I liked the admiration and the sympathy, and the envy, too. Revision Col 3 Collins at Home | Support for schools Home tutors Letts Revision Collins4Parents Collins Book Sale Revision for students Some might say that Michael Morpurgo is the nation's storyteller. A titan of literature, children all over the planet love and devour his books. 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.

A Medal for Leroy Activity Pack - Twinkl Michael Morpurgo A Medal for Leroy Activity Pack - Twinkl

Hello Yellow - 80 Books to Help Children Nurture Good Mental Health and Support With Anxiety and Wellbeing - Family secrets exist in every family, but those of Michael's family are HUGE, and Michael is not sure what to do with them once he unearths them. I was a little skeptical about this book before I started reading it because I didn't really care for the last Morpurgo book I read. But I was pleasantly surprised once I started reading. A Medal for Leroy is a gentle, poignant story that has some really interesting elements in it. It is about family, love and being true to yourself, and the emotional harm and unhappiness that family secrets can inflict on everyone involved. But is it also about triumph and hope and acceptance and I expect you may shed a tear or two before you finish. You can also read about his life in War Child to War Horse,a collaborative biography with Maggie Fergusson.

Michael Morpurgo Press Reviews

urn:lcp:medalforleroy0000morp_q9h5:epub:d1b5bd82-6e5e-4b0e-900c-c4d11d7cf6d3 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier medalforleroy0000morp_q9h5 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t8cg6wk6s Invoice 1213 Isbn 9780007487516 That's just about all I knew, all she would tell me, anyway. No matter how much I asked, and I did, and more often as I grew up, she would say little more about him. I know now how painful it must have been for her to talk of him, but at the time I remember feeling very upset, angry almost toward her. He was my father, after all, wasn't he? It felt to me as if she was keeping him all for herself. Occasionally after a soccer match, or when I'd run down to the corner shop on an errand for old Ma Merritt who lived next door to us, Maman might say something like: "Your papa would have been so proud of you. I so wish he'd known you." But never anything more, nothing about him, nothing that helped me to imagine what sort of a man he might have been.