Career reaches new stage.

Byline: By David Whetstone 

Michael Morpurgo, who has made a glittering career out of children's stories, tells David Whetstone what he has in store for us.

Days after receiving the OBE in the Queen's 80th birthday honours list, Michael Morpurgo was at Buckingham Palace yesterday ( not for the investiture (that comes in the autumn) but for the special party to celebrate Britain's achievements in children's literature.

As well as 2,000 children and their parents, Postman Pat, Winnie the Pooh and even Dennis the Menace were in attendance. But Michael Morpurgo, the former Children's Laureate, had more than earned his place at the party.

He is one of Britain's most successful and thoughtful children's authors whose books appeal not just to young readers but older ones too.

Tomorrow the stage adaptation of one of his books, Kensuke's Kingdom, opens at the Theatre Royal ( and last week he rang The Journal to tell us about it.

Kensuke's Kingdom, winner of the 2000 Children's Book Award, was adapted for Birmingham Stage Company by Stuart Paterson. It tells of Michael, a boy who sets sail around the world with his parents. When their yacht runs into a terrible storm, Michael is washed overboard and later regains consciousness to find himself stranded on a desert island with only his dog for company.

Soon, though, he finds he is not the only human being on this pinprick of land in the Pacific.

Another of Michael's hugely successful books, Private Peaceful, the reflections of a soldier in the First World War, has also been adapted for the theatre and performed to acclaim around Britain and in New York.

I wonder if he has ever written a play and he replies that he has just written his very first one. But it forms part of a much bigger project ( a 30-part series for BBC Radio 4 called The Invention of Childhood.

"It's about the last 1,000 years of childhood in Britain and what life has been like for children in that time," says Michael.

"I co-wrote the series with an academic, Hugh Cunningham from the University of Kent. He gathered all the historical evidence and then myself and a producer at the BBC are working it into the 30 programmes which I am presenting."

It sounds a little strange, the notion of childhood as an invention. But Michael says the title emerged from looking back at how the phenomenon of childhood has been regarded over a millennium.

He believes ( based on Prof Cunningham's evidence ( that there has been a gradual understanding of childhood as a concept, progressing from the idea of the seven ages of man through into the period of the romantic poets (Blake, Coleridge and the rest) who portrayed childhood as something innocent and to be valued.

But what of today? It seems we shouldn't imagine we are that much more adept at parenthood than many of our predecessors.

"I think we still have the notion that as adults our job is to prepare children for something which comes next rather than allowing them to enjoy their time as children," says Michael.

"I think there's a tendency to look down on childhood and to think that it's an inferior time of life.

"There's a lot of pressure on people to put away childish things and grow up. There's a sort of rush towards adulthood. And while we no longer put children up chimneys, there is this determination that children become economic units by working hard at school."

There's also the issue of play. While there have never been more indoor play areas, the former Children's Laureate contends: "We try to give our children this great freedom but they have nine times less room to play in than they did 100 years ago because we are all terrified of cars and nasty people.

"We encourage children to come inside, saying they can be free but there must be no danger. But there is a danger that this approach means they will grow up without understanding some of the real dangers that are out there."

Michael, who has three children and seven grandchildren, remembers growing up just after the Second World War when there was a general sense of trauma in the air which largely passed him by. He recalls playing on bomb sites in London and having a whale of a time, and then getting sent away to boarding school. "I had an unusual childhood in terms of now but it wasn't so very unusual then."

As a master storyteller, Michael has spent much of his adult life providing today's increasingly restricted children with escapist material on the printed page. The experiences of young Michael in Kensuke's Kingdom, inspired by the author's love of Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe, will make a modern parent's hair stand on end.

"This is the second time Kensuke's Kingdom has been adapted for the stage but this is a bigger production than the first," says Michael. "What I love about it is that it's acted so persuasively, so everyone in the theatre believes it and that's wonderful. The scenery is good too. Children come away caught up in it so you know it has worked."

Michael says there's a good chance it may also become a film. HBO in America have bought the rights and there's a "wonderful" screenplay by British screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce.

The next Michael Morpurgo story in the bookshops will be "a bit of an epic" called Alone On A Wide Wide Sea.

Michael says an Australian friend of his sailed around the world with a friend in a 31ft yacht. One night, in the lonely expanse of the southern ocean, they spotted a strange light in the sky.

By emailing friends in Sydney, they established that it was the International Space Station. The friends emailed NASA who put the guys on the yacht in touch with the guys in space. An extraordinary communication ensued which fired Michael's imagination. He tells the story to me with such relish that the new novel just has to be another great read. Look out for it in September, along with the Radio 4 series which is due to start on the 24th of that month.

Kensuke's Kingdom is at the Theatre Royal, Newcastle, from tomorrow until Saturday. There are daytime and evening performances although some are already sold out. Box office: 0870 905 5060.