Flamingo Boy
A stunning new classic from master storyteller Michael Morpurgo for readers of 9+, in the vein of PRIVATE PEACEFUL and THE BUTTERFLY LIONThis is a landmark new novel form the nation’s favourite storyteller, set in the unique landscape of the Camargue in the South of France during WW2. There, a young autistic boy lives on his parents’ farm among the salt flats, and the flamingos that live there. There are lots of things he doesn’t understand: but he does know how to heal animals. He loves routine, and music too: and every week he goes to market with his mother, to ride his special horse on the town carousel.But then the Germans come, with their guns, and take the town. A soldier shoots a flamingo from the sky, and it falls to earth terribly injured. And even worse is to come: the carousel is damaged, the horses broken. For this vulnerable boy, everything is falling apart.Only there’s a kind sergeant among the Germans – a man with a young boy of his own at home, a man who trained as a carpenter. Between them, perhaps boy and man can mend what has been broken – and maybe even the whole town…
Читать Flamingo Boy онлайн беплатно
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2018
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
HarperCollins Publishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk
Text copyright © Michael Morpurgo 2018
Jacket photographs © Maria Castellanos/Shutterstock (flying flamingos); Stefano Garau/Shutterstock (front cover flamingo); Ondrej Prosicky/Shutterstock (flying flamingos at sunrise); blickwinkel/Alamy Stock Photo (bull); Christian Hütter/Alamy Stock Photo (flamingo frieze); Pixelheld/Shutterstock (dunes); gyn9037/Shutterstock (dark clouds); bepsy/Shutterstock (swamp); saranya33/Shutterstock (sunset); Sergey Uryadnikov/Shutterstock (Camargue horses); Nataliya Hora/Shutterstock (carousel); Stephen Mulcahey/Arcangel (boy)
Jacket design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Cover image of Flamingo Boy written by Michael Morpurgo
Michael Morpurgo asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008134631
Ebook Edition © 2018 ISBN: 9780008134662
Version: 2018-09-04
For Alan, for Lorens, and their mum and dad
Contents
Chapter 1: Someone Called Vincent
Chapter 2: My Near-death Experience
Chapter 3: The Long, Straight Road to Nowhere
Chapter 5: A Complete Flamingo
Chapter 6: How it Was, How We Were
Chapter 7: The Charbonneau Carousel
Chapter 12: Be Proud and Carry On
Chapter 13: The Day the Music Died
Chapter 15: Not in Front of Lorenzo
Chapter 17: Out of Sight, Out of Mind
Chapter 21: Patience is a Virtue
Chapter 22: An Accident, A Casualty
Chapter 27: A Light in the Darkness
Chapter 28: A Knock at the Door
Chapter 29: Free at Last! Free Again!
With thanks to Anne-Sophie Deville who first introduced us to her flamingos and to the beauty and mystery of her beloved Camargue
I read it in a book once, when I was a boy. I don’t remember what book it was from, but the story I have never forgotten. An old traveller is sitting on the steps of his gypsy caravan, drinking a mug of tea in the sunshine. He’s stopped for a while, right in the middle of a roundabout, his tethered piebald horse grazing the grass verge nearby.
A police car pulls up. “You can’t stop here,” the policeman says.
“Morning, son,” says the traveller. “You want some tea? Got plenty to spare.” The policeman is rather nonplussed by this. No one has called him “son” for a very long time, and he rather likes it.
“No time to stop for tea,” he says. “Thanks all the same. Where are you going, you and your horse?”
“Not sure,” says the traveller. “The old horse and me, we just follow the bend in the road, go wherever it takes us.”
“Nice horse,” the policeman says, his tone softening all the time.
“And where might you be off to, son, this fine day?” the old traveller asks him.
“Maybe I’ll do what you do,” replies the policeman. “Maybe I’ll just follow the bend in the road. Sounds like a good idea.” And off he goes, knowing full well he should have moved the old traveller on, but glad he hadn’t.
I don’t know why, but I have never forgotten that story. I am older these days, a lot older – over fifty now. And, when I think about it, I suppose that in my own way I was trying to do just what the old traveller had done, what that policeman said he would like to do. I was following the bend in the road. That’s what I was setting out to do, in the summer of 1982, which was a long time ago now, but I remember it all, as if it were yesterday. It’s another story I don’t forget. You don’t forget the stories and the people who change your life.
It began with a picture, a painting, two paintings really. In Art class at my primary school, Miss Weatherby – who was the best teacher I ever had – told us one day to “paint a story”. So I painted a picture of that same old traveller sitting on the steps of his gypsy caravan, his piebald horse grazing the grass nearby, and there was a police car in the painting too. I gave it a title, wrote it at the top: “Following the Bend in the Road”. Miss Weatherby said it was the best painting I had ever done – she said that a lot, but she meant it every time. I took it home. My mother also said it was brilliant, so brilliant that I should sign it, and she would hang it up on the wall in my bedroom, in pride of place, next to my boat picture.
