Dear Olly [Illustrated] [Paperback]

Michael Morpurgo has a distinctive writing style that turns the ordinary into the extraordinary with a lyrical twist that make him an undeniable great in the world of children's literature. Here, in Dear Olly, Morpurgo brings one family's story to sparkling life with a stunning simplicity that is at once compelling and poetic in its execution.

Olly's brother Matt has always wanted to be a clown, and when he sees the plight of Africa's children he makes the decision to fly the family nest to take his skill to a place devoid of laughter. To his family it is a travesty: this bright, intelligent boy with a glowing future ups and leaves to head into the unknown, leaving behind him a trail of worry and feelings of impending doom.

Olly is charged with the care of a family of starlings that she and her brother have been watching over in the garden. After Matt's sudden departure the nest is ravaged, leaving just one fledgling alive and stunned. Olly nurses him back to health, and names him Hero. It is Hero's subsequent long and perilous flight to Africa that links the story of Olly, at home with her mother in England, to Matt's new life in Africa. Told in three voices--that of Olly, Hero and Matt--the story spans the continents and delivers love and determination to a poignant, thought-provoking story that stirs the soul.

A beautiful book, brimming with true warmth and dignity, Dear Olly is an unusual work that deserves a space on every child's bookshelf. --Susan Harrison. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

A moving story of a brother, a sister and a swallow, and how all are in some way victims of the horrors of landmines.

Olly’s brother Matt wants to go and work with children who have been made orphans, through war, in Africa. He wants to be a clown and make them laugh. His mother and sister want him to stay in England and go to university.

Hero, a swallow, has a journey to make too. He must fly to Africa for the winter to join all the other swallows. His journey is difficult and fraught with danger.

Three separate stories are woven into one powerful and moving novel whose central theme not only exposes the horrors of war and of landmines, but also the endurance of the human spirit.

I came across two stories that enabled me to compose my symphony story: one movement here, at home on the farm in Devon, one in Africa - and the two themes linked by a third, the swallow's flight from home to Africa.

I heard of a young Frenchman, so moved by the misery and horror of war and suffering in Rwanda that he gave up everything, and left at once to help in the only way he knew how.

Then, a good friend of mine suffered a dreadful car accident. Full of admiration, I watched how he coped with the pain, with the change it bought to his life. I charted his recovery, his rebuilding of himself.

Dear Olly, is a story about nobility and courage, courage against all odds - the young Frenchman's, the swallow's and my friend's.

I hope you love reading it as much as I loved writing it.
MICHAEL MORPURGO (September 2000)

A story in three movements, told my three voices - a lyrical tale of family. love and determination.

Michael divides his time between his writing and running Farms for City Children, a charity which each year takes up to 3,000 children to a working farm for a week. Michael and his wife Clare were awarded MBEs this year for their work with the charity. Before the first farm opened 22 years ago, Morpurgo was a teacher and his knowledge of children’s experiences, plus his experience of Farms enrich his writing enormously.
Michael Morpurgo has won the Whitbread Children’s Book Award, and the Smarties Book Prize.

It was the news. Africa. Soldiers in trucks. A smoky sprawling city of tents and ramshackle huts. A child standing alone and naked by an open drain, stick-like legs, distended stomach, and crying, crying. A tented hospital. An emaciated mother sitting on a bed clutching her child to her shrivelled breast. A girl, about Olly's age perhaps, squatting under a tree, her eyes empty of all life, eyes that had never known happiness. Flies clustered and crawled all over her face. She seemed to have neither the strength nor the will to brush them off. Olly felt overwhelmed by a terrible sadness. "It's horrible," she muttered.

Suddenly, without a word, Matt got up from the sofa and stormed out, banging the door...

...She knew where she could find him. All summer the swallows had been flying in and out of their nest at the back of the garage. Matt had constructed a well-camouflaged hide at a discreet distance from the nest, and would sit in it for hours on end - he had sone most of his exam revision up there - watching and sometimes photographing the parent swallows, as they renovated their nest, incubated their eggs, and now as they flew almost constant hunting sorties to feed their young. He never liked anyone to come too close when the swallows were nesting - he had even made his mother park her car in the street until the young had flown the nest.

Olly found him sitting up there in the hide, his knees drawn up to his chin. "Stay there. I'll come down," he said. They walked together into the back garden. "They've hatched four," he went on. "One more to go, I hope." He sat down on the swing under the conker tree. It creaked and groaned under him. He didn't say anything for a while. Then he told her: "I've made up my mind, Olly. I'm not going to college. I'm not going to be a vet."

"What about Mum?" Olly said. "What'll she say?"

"It's not Mum's life is it? She wants me to be a vet because she is, because Dad was. Well, I don't want it. She just assumed I did. They all did. Ever since I was very little, Olly, I only wanted to do one thing."
"What?"
"I just want to make people laugh."