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Michael Morpurgo's Jemima the Pig and the 127 Acorns is a short, warm farm story for 6 year olds about a boy, a very big pig and a pocketful of acorns.
It's written as a letter. A dad is writing to his daughter Amy, who's nervous about her school trip to a farm called Wick. He went on the very same trip when he was ten, and he wants her to know what a good time he had.
Wick is a six-hundred-year-old house with a moat, a creaky bedroom where Queen Elizabeth the First once slept, and a farmyard full of animals. And then there's Jemima, a huge Gloucestershire Old Spot sow. She smells, she slobbers and she argues with every other pig on the farm. And the boy is completely smitten!
When his teacher, Mr Hicks, tells the class that pigs love acorns more than anything, the boy starts sneaking off to the old oak tree to fill his pockets. One day he collects a hundred and twenty-seven. The next morning Jemima is ill, and he's terrified it's his fault.
Who hasn't done something for all the right reasons and then worried they'd got it badly wrong? Your reader will feel that knot in his tummy. (The very first line promises two happy endings, so nobody is left in suspense for long.)
It's lovely read aloud. The voice is chatty and gentle, like a grown-up telling a true story at bedtime, and Mr Hicks has a habit of wandering from acorns to Shakespeare and the Spanish Armada. There's nice detail about farm jobs too, like grooming horses, feeding calves and picking apples.
It could really help a child who's anxious about going away. The whole point of the letter is to tell Amy she'll be fine, and that she'll be far too busy to feel homesick.
If your reader has a school trip or a first night away coming up, this could be a really lovely one to share first.
If they fall for Morpurgo's farm animals, The Nine Lives of Montezuma follows a farm cat and the boy who looks after him. Be aware that it opens with a much harsher look at farm life, including kittens that don't survive.
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