War Horse

War Horse by Michael Morpurgo is a First World War story for 11 year olds, told from beginning to end by the horse.

What happens

Joey is not yet six months old when he is sold. His mother goes first, whisked out of the ring and away, and he never sees her again.

Nobody much wants him. He is spindly and half-thoroughbred with a wild look in his eye. He goes in the end for three guineas, to a farmer who has been drinking, who ropes him, throws him to the ground and drags him home tied to the back of a cart.

That evening a boy looks over the stable door. Albert is thirteen and has been told not to touch him. He goes in anyway, rubs Joey dry with his own coat, dabs salt water on his raw face, fetches sweet hay and a bucket of cold water, and talks without stopping the whole time.

He names him Joey. He promises to look after him. Joey believes him, and so will your reader.

The clever thing here is that Joey reports without ever explaining. He does not know what a war is. He does not know why Albert's father is a different man on Tuesdays. He tells you what he saw and what he felt, and you do the understanding.

The best stretch of the early book is a bet. Albert's father has wagered he can have Joey pulling a plough inside a week, and if he loses, Joey is sold or shot. So Albert, who has never been anything but gentle, picks up a whip.

Joey has no idea why his boy has changed. Old Zoey just leans into her collar beside him and pulls, head down. By the end of the week they have done it together, and Albert can afford to be kind again.

Then a man comes across the yard shouting for his wife, and it is 1914.

A word about the first thirty pages. A foal is taken from his mother and never sees her again. A drunk man ropes him, drags him behind a cart until his face is rubbed raw, brings a crop down on an old mare for no reason, and twice says he would shoot the colt. Joey kicks out at him in the dark and very nearly is shot for it. A child who finds cruelty to animals hard going will find quite a lot of it early on, and then the book turns into a war story, which is its own conversation to have.

What carries a reader through is Albert. He is on Joey's side every single time, and he says so out loud, at length, to a horse.

What to read next

For the other half of all this, Farm Boy sits a boy down on the same Devon farm to hear his grandfather talk about his own father, a farm boy of fourteen who went to the war because his horse went.