Private Peaceful

Title:

Private Peaceful

Author:

Morpurgo, Michael.

ISBN:

9780007486441

Personal Author:

Morpurgo, Michael.

Publication Information:

London : HarperCollins Children's, 2012.

General Note:

Film tie-in.

Originally published: London: Collins, 2003.

Abstract:

From the Children's Laureate of England, a stunning novel of the First World War, a boy who is on its front lines, and a childhood remembered. "They've gone now, and I'm alone at last. I have the whole night ahead of me, and I won't waste a single moment of it . . . I want tonight to be long, as long as my life . . ." For young Private Peaceful, looking back over his childhood while he is on night watch in the battlefields of the First World War, his memories are full of family life deep in the countryside: his mother, Charlie, Big Joe, and Molly, the love of his life. Too young to be enlisted, Thomas has followed his brother to war and now, every moment he spends thinking about his life, means another moment closer to danger.

Subject Term:

World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction.

Genre:

Historical fiction.

Format:

Books

Document ID:

SD_ILS:1373294

Availability:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Shelf Number	Material Type	Status
Searching... Asherville Library	J E MORP	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Central Services	J E MORP	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Croftdene Library	J E MORP	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Hillcrest Library	J E MORP	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Hillcrest Library	JE MORC/GROW	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Kloof Library	JE MORC	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Lalucia Library	MORC	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Malvern Library	JE MORP GROW	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Merebank Library	J E MORP	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Montford Library	J E MORP	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Montlands Library	J E MORP	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Mpola Library	J E MORP	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Musgrave Library	J E MORP	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Newlands West Library	J E MORP	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Prince Edward Library	J E MORP	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Stanmore Library	J E MORP	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Stonebridge Library	J E MORP	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Tongaat Central Library	MORC	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Tshelimnyama Library	J E MORP	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Umbilo Library	J E MORP	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Umkhumbane Library	J E MORP	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Umlazi-W Library	J E MORP	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Westville Library	J E MORP	Juvenile English Fiction	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

A stunning edition of this modern classic of World War One, featuring an introduction by the author and insightful testimonies from soldiers.

Told in the voice of Private Tommo Peaceful, the story follows twenty-four hours at the front, and captures his memories of his family and his village life - by no means as tranquil as it appeared.

Full of vivid detail and engrossing atmosphere, leading to a dramatic and moving conclusion, Private Peaceful is both a compelling love story and a deeply moving account of the First World War.

Extra material:

- Introduction by Michael Morpurgo

- Inspiration letter by Michael Morpurgo

- Background on the execution of British soldiers in WW1 for cowardice, including personal testimony from soldiers

Author Notes

British author Michael Morpurgo was born in St. Albans, Hertforshire in 1943. He attended the University of London and studied English and French. He became a primary school teacher in Kent for about ten years. He and his wife Clare started a charity called Farms for City Children. They currently own three farms where over 2000 children a year stay for a week and experience the countryside by taking part in purposeful farmwork.

He has published over 100 books and several screenplays. He won the 1995 Whitbread Children's Book Award for The Wreck of the Zanzibar, the 1996 Nestle Smarties Book Prize for The Butterfly Lion, and the 2000 Children's Book Award for Kensuke's Kingdom. Private Peaceful won the 2005 Red House Children's Book Award and the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award. Five of his books have been made into movies and two have been adapted for television. He was named as the third Children's Laureate in May 2003.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (3)

School Library Journal Review

Gr 7 Up-Michael Morpurgo's novel (Scholastic, 2004) is performed by Jeff Woodman with the dignity and grace befitting this story of Britain's failure during the Great War to protect its young troops from their own vengeful officers. Charlie and Thomas Peaceful, brothers separated by three years, have grown up in the laboring class as groundskeepers' sons. Thomas, age 15, has held a nearly lifelong secret shame that he was responsible for their father's accidental death. Charlie rectifies this misunderstanding during their final night together, the night before Charlie, who has been court martialed, is shot by his king's own firing squad. Thomas's memories are interspersed with his awareness of the passage of minutes during Charlie's last night, continually recalling listeners to the looming endpoint in this beautifully constructed work. Woodman gives each character a compelling voice, speeding and slowing his delivery to suit the actions and moods of each passage. Listeners will enjoy this historical fiction for the well-turned characters and steadily building plot, but also will find many finely honed details of the period embedded in a narrative that includes romance, humor, adventure, and a host of moral questions that remain lively generations later.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publisher's Weekly Review

Morpurgo's (Kensuke's Kingdom) suspenseful, ultimately tragic novel opens as 18-year-old Tommo Peaceful stays up all night "to try to remember everything." The author plants clues as to the narrator's sense of urgency with a framing structure: each chapter begins with Tommo's thoughts in the present, then flashes back to a memory. The novel divides into two parts: Tommo and his brother Charlie's lives before they enlist in WWI and during it. Before the war, their lives in rural England seem almost idyllic-except for Tommo's "terrible secret" (their forester father is killed by a falling tree when he pushes Tommo from its path). Their loving, closeknit family includes a retarded older brother and sweet Molly, a schoolmate whom Tommo and Charlie both love (and who winds up married to Charlie). Tommo recalls how his brother constantly looked after him, and readers observe Charlie's stalwart sense of loyalty and his refusal to bend to authority. How these qualities in Charlie manifest themselves, both before and during the war, play out dramatically yet realistically in both brothers' lives. On the frontlines in France, Tommo recounts the horrors of war: hellish conditions, friends killed and a cruel sergeant who hates Charlie. Readers will come away with a clear picture of a very different era. This is a moving depiction of a loving relationship between two brothers, their lives so linked that readers may wonder until the end whose fate lies in the balance. All in all, a powerful story about war's costs, and who pays the price. Ages 12-up. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Gr. 7-12. In this World War I story, the terse and beautiful narrative of a young English soldier is as compelling about the world left behind as about the horrific daily details of trench warfare: the mud, rats, gas attacks, slaughter. At 15, Thomas lied about his age in order to follow his beloved older brother, Charlie, to fight in France. Now, nearly two years later, as Thomas sits waiting in the dark for the horror he knows will come at dawn, he remembers it all. Growing up as a poor farm boy in a happy family, he was always close to Charlie and to their brain-injured brother, Joe, a character Morpurgo draws with rare tenderness and truth. Thomas and Charlie even loved the same girl; Charley married her, but she writes to them both. Thomas also remembers British brutality, from the landlord who threatened the family with eviction if Charlie didn't enlist to the cruel army sergeant who tried to break Charlie's spirit. Charlie may be too perfect, almost a Christ figure, but it's Thomas' viewpoint of the brother he loves. Suspense builds right to the end, which is shocking, honest, and unforgettable. Be sure to add this to titles in the Read-alikes, War to End All Wars BKL N 1 01. --Hazel Rochman Copyright 2004 Booklist