Eleanor Farjeon Award Goes to Michael Morpurgo

The winner of this year’s Eleanor Farjeon Award for Outstanding Contribution to the World of Children’s books is author Michael Morpurgo in what is a well deserved accolade for the celebrated children’s author.

The award is administered by the Children’s Book Circle and the organisation chose Morpurgo because of how he has inspired a deep passion throughout his career.

Morpurgo was handed the award by Anne Harvey, executor of the Eleanor Farjeon Estate. The author gave an acceptance speech and said that it ‘A Joy of association” to win this award and applauded the breadth of the prize in its recognition of contributions from the full sphere of children’s books as “the making involves everyone… it reaches out to libraries, people who care, authors and publishers. It takes us all to put out the joy of reading.”

After the announcement of the prize Nicola Davies gave this year’s Patrick Hardy lecture titled ‘Whale Tail Tales and other stories’ where she recounted her adventures at sea searching for sightings of humpback whales. She closed the evening by saying more needs to be done to tackle illiteracy among children and giving everyone a call to arms by declaring ‘Ladies and gentleman, we have work to do’.

Michael Morpurgo Collection