The Day the World Stopped Turning by Michael Morpurgo

The Day the World Stopped Turning by Michael Morpurgo

Michael Morpurgo's The Day the World Stopped Turning is a middle-grade novel about an extraordinary boy who sees the world differently.

In the unique landscape of the Camargue (France) during World War II, Lorenzo lives among the salt flats and the flamingos. There are lots of things he doesn't understand-but he does know how to heal animals, how to talk to them; the flamingos especially. He loves routine, and music too: and every week he goes to market with his mother. It's there he meets Kezia, a Roma girl, who helps her parents run their carousel-and who shows him how to ride the wooden horse as the music plays.

But then the German soldiers come, with their guns. Everything is threatened, everything is falling apart: the carousel, Kezia and her family, even Lorenzo's beloved flamingos. Yet there are kind people even among soldiers, and there is always hope. . .

Simon Reade has adapted Michael Morpurgo's Toro! Toro! and The Mozart Question as well as the phenomenally successful stage and screen versions of Private Peaceful. His other plays include Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp, Not the End of the World, The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark, Pride and Prejudice, and for the RSC, Ted Hughes' Tales From Ovid, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Epitaph for the Official Secrets Act.

Michael Morpurgo is an English author, poet, playwright and librettist, best known for his work in children's literature. He was the third Children's Laureate. His children's novel War Horse has been adapted for stage where it became a smash hit success in the UK, before transferring to Broadway and Toronto. War Horse has also been adapted for the screen, directed by Steven Spielberg, and was released in 2012.