About The Book
By the end of the day, after it was all over, I could think only of the stories.
When the Chief Nurse tells the seventy patients who have filled her A&E waiting room that they won’t be seen by a doctor for at least twelve hours, some of them leave … and the rest decide to pass the time by telling stories to each other – just as the pilgrims in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales did for each other.
And so they tell all kinds of tales – exciting stories, heartwarming stories, funny stories; stories about the past and the present; about family and friends; about history; about nature and the world around us.
The stories they tell do more than just pass the hours – they transport their audience to different times and places, connecting people who are separated by hundreds of years and thousand of miles, like an act of magic. Every story transforms not just the listener, but the storyteller, too – and they last a lifetime.
Beautifully written with Michael Morpurgo’s warm, accessible and inimitable style, with stunning interior illustrations by Michael Foreman and beautiful jacket artwork by Oliver Jeffers, The Whispering Tree is a wonderful tribute to the magic of storytelling.
About the Author
Michael Morpurgo OBE is one of Britain’s best loved writers for children, with sales of over 35 million copies. He has written over 150 books, has served as Children’s Laureate, and has won many prizes, including the Smarties Prize, the Writers Guild Award, the Whitbread Award, the Blue Peter Book Award and the Eleanor Farjeon Lifetime Achievement Award. With his wife, Clare, he is the co-founder of Farms for City Children. Michael was knighted in 2018 for services to literature and charity.
