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Running Wild by Michael Morpurgo | Book review

Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Nov 07, 2009

Summary

Michael Morpurgo's tale of a wild child ranks among his best

Children's fiction often finds ingenious ways of getting rid of adults, forcing its protagonists to depend on their own resources and initiative. Michael Morpurgo's method here is more drastic than most. By the end of chapter two, nine-year-old Will has lost both parents: his soldier father has been killed in Iraq, and his mother, on a holiday to Indonesia intended to help herself and Will to recover from their loss, drowns in the Boxing Day tsunami.

Morpurgo uses, to great effect, the reported story of a boy who survived the great wave when the elephant he was riding sensed imminent danger and ran away in terror. Will finds himself clinging to a stampeding elephant, then alone in the rainforest with no one to depend on but his new companion Oona. The ensuing tale sees Will learning to survive by becoming an "elephant's child", finding food and shelter under Oona's guidance, and later taking the role of surrogate parent to a group of infant orang-utans whose mothers have been shot out of the trees by

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