Children’s author Michael Morpurgo finally has a film adaptation he is happy with in the upcoming Kensuke’s Kingdom. But don’t get him started on Steven Spielberg’s version of War Horse.  

“Even the horses are wrong!” Morpurgo said of the Hollywood legend’s 2011 adaptation of his beloved World War I novel. 

“They’re all fine, aristocratic animals. The horses that go to war are farm horses, great big chunky things.”

Morpurgo, 80, is one of the world’s best-loved children’s writers, with more than 100 books to his name. 

He has loved some theatre adaptations of his work, but the films have rarely captured the spirit of his books, he said. 

Spielberg’s War Horse was a particular disappointment, failing to show that the soldiers came from poor, rural backgrounds, sent to their deaths for a war that had nothing to do with their lives.

“It’s poorly written,” Morpurgo told AFP. 

It was full of “cliches of war, cliches of people... so I didn’t care for it.” 

‘Exceedingly beautiful’

By contrast, he has nothing but good to say of the adaptation of Kensuke’s Kingdom about a Japanese boy alone on an island after losing his family to war.

The animated film features the voices of Oscar contender Cillian Murphy and Ken Watanabe. It is released in France next week, and due elsewhere later this year.

“This is the first film I’ve been involved with, which I can honestly say is, to me, better than the book,” said Morpurgo.

“It’s extraordinarily rich in emotion and suspense. Nothing is rushed, it’s given time, it’s exceedingly beautiful.”

The story includes a frank look at the violence of the animal kingdom, and Morpurgo has never shied away from difficult topics including the Holocaust (The Mozart Question) and Israeli-Palestinian conflict (The Kites are Flying!). 

Does he have advice for parents seeking to explain the world’s problems to children?

Kensuke’s Kingdom will feature the voice of Cillian Murphy. Photo: Shutterstock.com

“My rule is introducing these things slowly in a way they can handle. Not too soon but not too late,” he said.

He compares it to his childhood in London after World War II when adults shared little of the horrors they had experienced. 

There were clues: the photo on the piano of an uncle killed in action at 21, a beggar with a missing leg outside the sweet shop.  

“But it took me years to comprehend what had happened because no one talked about it.  

“The problem with that is it can come rushing on later and it can be very bad for your mental health to have these sudden shocks. Stories can play a part in explaining how the world is, and your place in it.”

‘Makes me unpopular’

Morpurgo said many of his stories are drawn from these formative years and those of his family. 

He was particularly marked by his grandfather’s story of arriving in England as a refugee from Belgium during World War I.  

“We British welcomed 240,000 Belgians and they went to our schools and hospitals and lived there at a time when no one knew who would win the war, because people said they needed help.”

He despairs of the anti-immigrant feeling in Britain today, particularly the plan to send refugees to Rwanda for processing.  

“All they can think of doing with refugees is to pack them away out of sight and I hate that,” he said. 

“So I’ve written about refugees quite a lot and it makes me quite unpopular, and I think that’s fine. Literature is there to protest what’s wrong, and children’s literature is the same.”