Muck and Magic

Michael Morpurgo's Muck and Magic is a countryside story for 9 year olds about a girl who's certain she'll be a champion cyclist, until three horses laugh at her over a wall.

What happens

Bonny's whole family lives and breathes cycling. Mum rides whenever she isn't being head teacher. Dad builds racing bikes in his shed with heavy metal blaring, and he keeps his old hip joint on the workbench for luck (everyone has to give it a rub before a ride!). Bonny is going to win three Olympic golds, just like her hero Laura Trott.

On her twelfth birthday she gets a brand-new racing bike and flies off into the Dales. Going too fast downhill, she brakes for a sheep and ends up in a ditch with a flat tyre. Three horses watch the whole thing from behind a dry-stone wall, and they seem to find it very funny.

She can't stop thinking about them. Soon every training ride goes past that field, with carrots in her pocket. She names them Peg, Tiny Tim and Big Ben. And she keeps an eye out for the woman in the long blue coat whose lawn is full of very still animals (they turn out to be statues).

Then the woman offers her a job mucking out, at three pounds an hour. Her name is Lizzie, she's a sculptor, and before long she wants Bonny to sit on the grey horse as the model for a rider.

It's told by Bonny looking back, and it's warm, a bit funny and full of carrots, horse muck and wet plaster. You really feel how grown-up it is to have a secret world of your own. Bonny doesn't tell her parents a thing, and she's leading a double life.

That's the bit plenty of kids will recognise. What happens when your family has one dream for you and you start to want something else?

It's a short book too, so it's a lovely quick read for a thoughtful reader rather than a long slog.

It's worth mentioning that there's a very sad moment towards the end. It's handled tenderly, but a sensitive reader might want someone close by when they get there.

What to read next

If they love the idea of a child and an older stranger striking up an unlikely friendship, The Butterfly Lion is a perfect follow-on. A lonely boy runs away from boarding school and ends up eating scones with an old lady, who has a story to tell and a lion on her hillside that shimmers blue in the sun.